Cambridge, 1888. Miss Vanessa Duncan is a young schoolmistress recently arrived from the countryside. She loves teaching and finds the world of academia fascinating; everything is going so well. But everything changes when a Fellow of Mathematics, Mr. Akers, is found dead in his room from a violent blow to the head. Invited to dinner by the family of one of her charges, Vanessa meets many of the victim’s colleagues, including Mr. Arthur Weatherburn, who had dined with Mr. Akers the evening of his death and happens to be Vanessa’s upstairs neighbor. Discussing the murder, she learns of Sir Isaac Newton’s yet unsolved ‘n-body problem’, which Mr. Akers might have been trying to solve to win the prestigious prize. As the murder remains unsolved, Vanessa’s relationship with Arthur Weatherburn blossoms. Then another mathematician, Mr. Beddoes is murdered and Arthur is jailed. Convinced of his innocence and with a theory of her own, Vanessa decides to prove her case. But when a third mathematician dies, it becomes a race against time to solve the puzzle. . .

Vanessa Duncan’s was a country girl fascinated with academia but unable to attend university, so when she moved to Cambridge, she became a schoolmistress. All appeared to be going well . . . until a man she had befriended, Arthur Weatherburn, was accused of being a serial killer. Using her powers of observation and intuition, and defying the social conventions of the late 1880s, Vanessa turned detective and discovered the true identity of the murderer, saving young Weatherburn’s life. Vanessa’s act of courage did not go unnoticed., and her talent for proving the innocence of the wrongly-accused is again called upon. But as Vanessa’s investigations progress, she is carried on a perilous journey from the beautiful English countryside to the bright lights of Paris.

March, 1896. Motherhood and work as a private detective don’t easily go hand-in-hand, but Vanessa is determined to give it a try. Being a wife and mother has meant that she’s had to give up her beloved teaching job, but Vanessa has been kept busy by a string of requests asking for her help in solving troubling cases. It is not often, though, that her investigations involve violent death . . .

On a balmy summer in 1898 Vanessa Wetherburn is contentedly feeding a clotted cream scone to her young son in her Cambridge garden when she is startled by the abrupt arrival of her long-time friend, the journalist Patrick O’Sullivan. Eager to discover the identity of a beautiful young woman found floating in the River Cam, Pat has called on the one woman he knows is sure to be able to solve the mystery. Over recent years Vanessa has garnered a reputation for solving crimes – including murders, thefts and blackmail attempts – but never before has she faced an unknown victim. She is at a loss to know where to begin. As Vanessa considers what to do, her first important clue arrives in the form of Ernest Dixon, who is worried by the disappearance of his favorite actress; a young woman named Ivy Elliot, who was playing the part of Ophelia. Could the missing girl and unidentified body be one and the same woman? Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, this latest case for the talented Mrs. Weatherburn proves to be her most perplexing yet.