Things had never been quite the same at Latter End since Lois had taken over. Suddenly life seemed to be an endless succession of bitter family rows, which Lois invariably won. But when Lois Latter is murdered, it's shocking to discover just how many people might have wished her dead.
Traveling to war-torn London to collect her inheritance, Laura Fane falls in love with a wounded RAF pilot and incites the jealousy of a wicked cousin, and when the pilot is murdered, Laura turns to Miss Silver for help.
It began with an advertisement in the paper requesting descendants of the late innkeeper to stay for a weekend at the inn. They arrived eager, a mixed assortment, but one of them got hideously murdered bringing the inn's stormy past to focus. Maud Silver was sent to investigate.
Dr. Arthur Calgary takes a ferry across the Rubicon River to Sunny Point, the home of the Argyle family. A year before, the matriarch of the family was murdered and a son, Jack, was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. Throughout the trial Jack had maintained his innocence, claiming he was hitchhiking on the night of the murder and he had been picked up by a middle-aged man in a dark car. Unable to locate this mystery man the police viewed Jack's as a lie. Calgary was the stranger in question, but he arrives to late for Jack - who succumbs to pneumonia after serving just six months of his sentence.
When Richard Abernethie, the master of Enderby Hall, dies his heirs assemble at the vast Victorian mansion to hear the reading of the will. It is then that Cora, Abernethie's sister, comes out with an alarming proposal: "But he was murdered, wasn't he?"
