The Honorable Daisy Dalrymple-Fletcher is on a convalescent trip in the countryside, visiting old school friends. The three of them, all unmarried, have recently bought a house together. They are a part of the generation of 'superfluous women', brought up expecting marriage and a family, but left without any prospects after more than 700,000 British men were killed in the Great War. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - are invited for Sunday lunch, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below the house which remains resolutely locked. Alec picks the lock but when he eventually opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine, but the stench of a dead body. And with that, what was a pleasant Sunday lunch becomes a much darker affair.
