Eager to escape a bleak Christmas at Castle Rannoch, Georgie takes temporary work as hostess for a wealthy holiday party in the village of Tiddleton-under-Lovey. The picturesque setting is disrupted by a series of deaths dismissed as accidents, each of which appears to echo a detail from the traditional twelve days of Christmas.
A recent prison escape and an old local curse offer convenient explanations, but Georgie believes someone is arranging the deaths. With Darcy unexpectedly arriving in the village, she follows the pattern of clues and tries to stop the killer before the Christmas sequence reaches its final verse.