A terrified wine importer named Aidan Fenchurch takes refuge in John Rawlings’s Piccadilly shop, claiming that his former mistress Ariadne Bussell has pursued him obsessively since he ended their affair. He entrusts Rawlings with sealed papers describing her conduct, then is bludgeoned to death outside his Bloomsbury home that same evening.
Sir John Fielding joins Rawlings in examining a family already fractured by grief: three very different daughters, a dependent cousin, a new intended bride and the formidable Mrs Bussell. Although the documents appear to point towards one obvious enemy, the manner of Fenchurch’s death suggests more than one attacker. Rawlings follows the case from London into Surrey, discovering that obsession is only one part of a larger pattern of inheritance, loyalty and concealed violence.
