When Virginia Freer went to spend a weekend with her friends the Boscotts the last person she expected to meet was the lying, light-fingered charmer who was her husband. She and Felix had been separated for several years.And the last thing she expected to encounter was murder. Yet within a few hours of the party given to celebrate the engagement of a local poet and a best-selling historical novelist, the novelist's sister arrived distraught on the Boscott's doorstep to announce that she had found her shot dead in their bungalow next door.But when Virginia, Felix and the Boscotts reach the scene they found that something very strange had happened to the corpse...So begins a deftly-plotted mystery involving a group of people whose relationships reach far back into the past. It is Felix, with his intuitive perception of human frailties heightened by his wry awareness of his own, who eventually uncovers the motive and the murderer, with the same adroitness that he displayed in Last Will and Testament in which he made his debut.