The family comprises two sons and three daughters (the youngest, Ada, is adopted) under the rule of their mother, a bedridden invalid who spends her days feeling sorry for herself and cursing her ungrateful children.

The German cook seems strangely attached to the adopted daughter; other hangers-on include the mother's physician, who is courting Sibella Greene, and the enigmatic butler.

Later, the two Greene brothers and the mother are killed and the only family left are the two surviving daughters, jaunty modern Sibella and shy Ada, against whom two murder attempts have been made.

The murders are complicated by sets of mysterious footprints appearing in the snow, which seem to have been made in an impossible way and by the suggestion that the paralyzed mother has been seen walking in the halls.

Another version, entitled Night of Mystery (1937), was based on The Greene Murder Case and starred Grant Richards as Philo Vance.