In this 22nd outing for Carola Dunn's aristocratic sleuth (following Heirs of the Body), the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is off to the country to see three old school friends. The trio have recently bought a house together, being part of the generation of "superfluous women" who'd anticipated marriage and a family but were left without prospects after so many men were killed in the Great War. At Sunday lunch with Daisy and her husband, Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, locked up tight. When Alec picks the lock and opens the door however, what greets them is not a cache of wine but rather a long-dead body.