It is late 1939 and Crescy Hardwick is a charismatic, if unpredictable, divorcée who seems to have found her place in the world at last… She loves and cherishes the rural cottage she has rented for the past few years. So, it is especially galling when she receives notice from the landlord of her impending eviction. Being Crescy, she does not take it well… But she is not the only person in the community to despise her landlord, Mathew Scaife. Most of the local people and even his own family seem to resent him. Nobody mourns when old Mathew is discovered dead in his chair at the local pub. Indeed, it seems likely that he would have been swiftly forgotten – were it not for the eagle eyes of an apparently bumbling doctor, who makes an astonishing discovery. Mathew Scaife was murdered; quickly and quietly and in a room full of people. How could this be? It is up to Inspector Guy Northeast to find out who killed Mathew and why. Returning reluctantly to the area, he quickly works out that the prime suspect is Crescy Hardwick. Which is something Guy finds difficult to come to terms with, for a host of reasons, not all of them professional or even logical.