Reduced to near penury by the iniquitous demands of the Inland Revenue, young barrister Julia Larwood spends the last of her savings on an Art Lovers holiday to Venice. But poor, romantic Julia - how could she possibly have guessed that the ravishing fellow Art Lover for whom she conceived a fatal passion was himself an employee of the Inland Revenue? Or that her hard-won night of passion with him would end in murder- with her inscribed copy of the current Finance Act subsequently discovered just a few feet away from the corpse...

It seemed the perfect way to avoid three million in taxes on a five-million-pound estate: change the Trust arrangement. Everyone in the family agreed to support the heiress, Camilla Galloway, in her court petition - except dreary cousin Deirdre, who suddenly demanded a small fortune for her signature. Then Deirdre has a terrible accident, which is the moment when the London barristers handling the trust - Cantrip, Selena, Ragwort and Julia - decide to summon their Oxford mentor Professor Hilary Tamar to Lincoln's Inn. And when deadly accidents in the family escalate, Hilary is dispatched on the most perilous quest of all: to find the truth and unmask the killer...

Young barrister Michael Cantrip has skipped off to the Channel Islands to take on a tax-law case that's worth a fortune—if Cantrip's tax-planning cronies can locate the missing heir. But Cantrip has waded in way over his head. Strange things are happening on these mysterious, isolated isles. Something is going bump in the night—and bumping off members of the legal team, one by one. Soon Cantrip is telexing the gang at the home office for help. And it's up to amateur investigator Hilary Tamar (Oxford don turned supersleuth) to get Cantrip back to the safety of his chambers—alive!

Follow the money in this gripping literary puzzle—the fourth and final installment of Sarah Caudwell’s brilliant Hilary Tamar mystery series. “Sarah Caudwell is one of my very favorite mystery writers.”—A. J. Finn, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window Julia Larwood’s Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they’ve already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? Even more to the Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss? That's a question for the sibyl, psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who has offended Aunt Regina and her friends by moving into the rectory, plowing under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens. When Isabella is found dead, all clues point to death by fiscal misadventure. So Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina to what appears to be capital fraud—and capital crime. The two women couldn't have a better champion than the erudite Hilary. Once again Sarah Caudwell sweeps us into the scene of the crime, leaving us to ponder the greatest mystery of Hilary themself. Don’t miss any of Sarah Caudwell’s riveting Hilary Tamar THUS WAS ADONIS MURDERED • THE SHORTEST WAY TO HADES • THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER • THE SIBYL IN HER GRAVE