“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Benjamin Franklin England, late April, 1926 When Henry Astley, Duke of Sutherland, turns up dead in bed at the end of an afternoon spent calling his family on the carpet, everyone assumes that the excitement finished the old boy off. He was quite old and also quite vociferous in his opinions, so it isn’t an unreasonable assumption. It isn’t until the next morning, when the duke’s valet and confidant is found shot to death in the hedge maze, that the whole thing takes on a more sinister cast. Bright Young Thing Philippa Darling, her best friend Christopher and his brother Francis, as well as their parents, Lord and Lady Herbert, have all been summoned to Sutherland Hall for a dressing down. So has cousin Crispin, the future duke, along with his parents, the Viscount and Viscountess St George. Everyone has a string of small peccadillos they’re trying to hide, along with a few guilty secrets they don’t want anyone to know about. The only question is, which secret was worth killing for? Pippa isn’t worried on her own behalf. She had no reason to want the duke dead. But when it looks like suspicion might fall on Christopher, she has no choice but to step up. She’ll sacrifice Francis if she has to, and would throw Crispin to the wolves without a second thought, but Scotland Yard will arrest Christopher over her dead body. And it might just come to that.

England, August, 1926 For months now, Pippa’s and Christopher’s neighbor Florence Schlomsky, the manhunter with the teeth, has been roaming London society looking for an opportunity to trade her father’s American fortune for a British title. Both the Astley cousins, Christopher and Crispin, have landed in her marital sights, a fact which has not endeared her to Pippa. But when Mr. and Mrs. Schlomsky arrive from America and Flossie is nowhere to be found, Pippa is first in line to offer assistance. She may not have liked Flossie, but she didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. And when a ransom note arrives at the Essex House Mansions demanding a million dollars in exchange for the heiress’s safe return, Pippa determines to do everything she can to get Flossie back to her parents. But when the trail leads from the glittering salons of Mayfair to the grimy streets of Southwark and beyond, Pippa discovers that there were aspects to Florence Schlomsky she didn’t realize were there, and perhaps it would have been better if she had never found out.

London, September 1926 Someone is out to get Pippa Darling. Or perhaps not. The tumble down the stairs into the underground involved a lot of people, all of whom said someone pushed them, and all of whom, no doubt, had wronged someone, somehow, at some point. And the Hackney cab that jumped the pavement and tried to run Pippa and her flat-mate Christopher down on their way home… well, it might have been after Christopher, mightn’t it? It might even have been after Lady Laetitia Marsden. She wasn’t there, of course, but she looks rather a lot like Christopher in drag, and he was dressed as his alter-ego Kitty Dupree at the time. Neither Christopher nor Pippa would mind very much if Laetitia were to be run over—it would save Christopher’s cousin Crispin from having to marry her—but of course it wasn’t either of them in the Hackney. They were too busy getting out of the way of the tires. If Laetitia was the intended victim, the jewelry theft at Marsden House might have had something to do with it. The Sutherland engagement ring is gone, right out from under Laetitia’s nose. She even saw the man who took it. Not to recognize, of course, but perhaps he doesn’t know that. So yes, it might have been Lady Laetitia in the headlamps of the Hackney. Or it might have been Christopher. Or it might have been Pippa.