A call from Scotland Yard couldnโt have come at a worse time for Duncan Kincaid. He has promised the weekend to Kit, the eleven-year-old son of his ex-wife. The son he never knew he fathered โ who doesnโt yet know Kincaidโs true identity. But Duncanโs best intentions are shattered by a case that draws him in and consumes his interest.
A young womanโs body has been found in the tall grass of East Londonโs Mudchute Park, her jacket and short skirt carefully arranged to preserve her modesty. It seems too odd a detail for a simple case of robbery or assault gone awry. And indeed the case becomes more complex when the dead woman is identified as Annabelle Hammond, bold and brilliant head of a family-owned tea company. For the victim was a mystery even to those who knew her best.
Alluring, headstrong, and ambitions, Annabelle was the sort of woman who inspired the strongest of emotionsโฆpassion certainly, jealousy, anger, even obsession. And when Duncan and Gemma fan out to question anyone connected to her, it doesnโt take long to discover that the lady was also adept at keeping secretsโฆespecially from those she loved. As the detectives try to penetrate Annabelleโs tangled affairs to glean the motive for her murderer, their list of suspects grows to include her suave, upper-class fiancรฉ; the handsome street musician who may have been the last person to see her alive; her sisterโs vengeful ex-husband; even her own father. But what they donโt know is that this case has long roots that reach far back into the past, and that resentments that should have been long buried still have the power to hurt, and many even the capacity to kill.
© 2003-2026