My great-aunt Liza is an old she-devil... but she's had a devilish raw deal.'


Lady Elizabeth Carn has ruled Tristowell Castle with an iron fist for fifty years. On the eve of her adored adopted daughter Augusta's twenty-first birthday, far-flung family return to the castle, dredging up past resentments and conflicts. The next morning, Elizabeth is discovered strangled at her writing desk and nephew Palin Carn is found to have disappeared in the night. Augusta, in love with Palin, cannot believe him capable of murder. The police disagree, but find more than one possible suspect with opportunity and motive. There is Veronica, Lady Elizabeth's first adoptee, ostracised at eighteen for eloping with a local man, and returning to Tristowell for the first time with her teenage sons. Eccentric painter Jane Bossom, impulsively adopted at twelve after the death of her parents but sent off three months later, has also returned to Tristowell to paint Augusta's portrait. And there is fierce, quiet Tenella, Elizabeth's resident harpist, who clearly knows more than she is telling.


Mary Fitt was the pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman (1897-1959), a classical scholar who taught Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff. Beginning in 1937, Freeman wrote twenty-nine mysteries and a number of short stories, mostly as Mary Fitt, and was elected to the Detection Club in 1950. Aside from her detective novels, Freeman published many books on classical Greece, scholarly articles and children's stories. She lived in St Mellons in Wales with her partner Dr Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet, a family physician and author.