Daisy Dalrymple and her Scotland Yard detective husband, Alec Fletcher, are delighted to move into a home on the outskirts of London they have inherited from Alec's late uncle, until a corpse turns up in their garden bushes amid rumors of a liquor smuggling ring.

Visiting a friend in 1926 Derbyshire, Daisy learns that her friend has been ghost-writing a popular novelist's most recent, and more successful, works while the novelist succumbs to a suspicious illness, compelling Daisy to investigate other members of his household.

Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her husband Alec--Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard--go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy's friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine, but the stench of a long-dead body. Before the local detective, Superintendent Underwood,...