Pity the lady's maid who found the body -- poor Emily, wife of the Marquis of Polbrook, had been strangled in the night. The last thing Emily's brother-in-law, Lord Francis Fanshawe, expects to find so soon after the crime is an adept investigator already settled comfortably in the Polbrook family circle. Ottilia Draycott, the Dowager Lady Polbrook's young new companion, is intelligent, resourceful, and observant -- and the family's only hope.
