John Rawlings has built a prosperous apothecary business and a contented family life when his wife Emilia is invited by an old school friend to perform before the royal circle at Gunnersbury House. Rawlings follows her there during the Christmas season, expecting an evening of entertainment, but instead finds himself at the scene of a brutal killing with the murder weapon in his hand.
Arrested while the real murderer remains free, Rawlings has to reconstruct events from inside a household where ceremony and private rivalry exist side by side. His family’s security is suddenly bound to his ability to prove that appearances have been manipulated. The royal setting gives the mystery a more claustrophobic form than his street investigations, as every new clue threatens both another victim and the life Rawlings thought he had secured.
