The Glessner family spent summers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. A summer home originally intended as a respite from severe allergies suffered by the Glessner’s son, George, the estate grew to include 20 or so buildings on 1,500 acres with a full-time staff of about 80 people.

Known as The Rocks, Frances Glessner Lee moved here full-time by 1941. It was here, in a workshop in her home, called The Cottage, that Lee constructed the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

In the 1970s,...