When Meredith Mitchell agreed to stay with her actress cousin Eve in the run-up to Eve s daughter s wedding she anticipated a degree of drama. But she hardly expected it to include murder, blackmail and unrequited love. Or to involve a certain Chief Inspector Markby, a middle-aged divorcee with an emotional history as unfortunate as her own. A material witness to the only case of murder the Cotswold village of Westerfield has ever seen, Meredith also finds herself acting as mother-confessor to the bride-to-be, who is clearly not telling the whole truth about her involvement with the dead man. Steering a path between her duty to the police and loyalty to her cousin s family is not easy, even for someone with Meredith s considerable diplomatic skills. And especially as her personal enquiries into events in Westerfield start to disinter past affections Meredith would far rather leave buried - and to provoke new ones she s not at all sure she can cope with ...