Aunt Rachel heard something last night. Gertrude heard it as well. Tonight, shots ring out, and a dead body appears at the foot of the circular staircase.¶ Now it is up to Rachel to piece together what happened, as she weaves her way through the circular statements of paranoid staff, secret passages, and even suspicions of ghosts. Rinehart was known as the American Agatha Christie, and The Circular Staircase shaped the “Had I But Known” element of the mystery genre, while remaining true to many gothic and Victorian motifs.