The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

The Crimson Rooms .....  set in London in 1924, Evelyn Gifford is awoken one night to find a young woman and her son at the door.  The young woman says that the boy is the son of Evelyn's beloved brother James, who died in the war. 

The Gifford's who are left in the house are all women still grieving the loss of James and both suspicious and resentful about the new arrivals who cause an upheaval in the established household.

Evelyn is a lawyer, one of the very few women who have managed to attend college and who are struggling to achieve a place in the all-male realm of the 1920's.  She finds herself dealing with a case involving a mother trying to regain custody of her children and a man accused of killing his wife-- at the same time she is dealing with the new arrivals in her home and the interest of a handsome lawyer.

Evelyn learns some hard truths about life, the law, and her brother James.

Fiction.  Mystery/Historical Fiction.  2010.  384 pages.