Shortly before Christmas a baby is found abandoned in a vicarage porch. Hours later, intrepid explorer Con Bartram is fatally stabbed in the same Wiltshire village. Are the two events connected? Widow Elizabeth Blair has two jobs - one as the owner of a quilt shop in Bath, the other as a private eye. When she and her lively young partner Max are hired to prove that Bartram's son did not do away with his father, she brings her enquiring mind and her American curiosity to bear on the case.
There is falseness in the widow's evasions, the younger son's lies, the daughter-in-law's jealous aggression - even in the evidence put forward by a member of the clergy. It is all as unstable as an ill-balanced ladder. Elizabeth, recovering from flu, has been experiencing the blues, but as she gets closer to uncovering Bartram's deadly enemy, she finds herself facing a far more dangerous crisis . . .
