"Delivering milk to Gabriella Patten at Celandine Cottage on a sunny April morning, Martin Snell cannot help noticing that something isn't quite right. The gate is off the latch for a start. Peering into the cottage, he sees the blackened armchair, the smoke-stained walls, and immediately phones the police. But when the body is found, it isn't Mrs Patten. It's Kenneth Fleming, England's star batsman, dead of asphyxiation, dead because someone wanted him to die.

When Scotland Yard is called in by the local police force, Inspector Lynley and Detective Sergeant Havers are surprised to find themselves confronted by an almost embarrassing multitude of suspects, from Gabriella to the dead man's teenage son. Nearly everyone with whom Fleming was in contact seems to have a motive for murder - and most of them also seem to have had the opportunity."