Ivy Beasley from Round Ringford days has moved to an old folks` residence in Barrington, a small village in Suffolk. Stroppy and autocratic as ever, she is busy shaping the place up to her standards, when Augustus Halfhide, tall, thin and oddly attractive in a wispy kind of way, moves into Hangman`s Row in the village. He is a mystery, determined to give nothing away about his past, and when he offers to see Ivy home from church one day, it is the beginning of an unlikely and fruitful relationship.
Alongside Ivy, Gus enlists Ivy`s much younger cousin Deirdre, and Ivy`s admirer, Roy Goodman, in setting up a detective agency called Enquire Within. Almost immediately, their first case makes its shocking appearance in the village. Another resident of Hangman`s Row, an old woman known for her sharp tongue and persecution of her hapless daughter Miriam, is found far from well on the floor of her cottage.
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