Professor of botany Andrew Basnett is looking forward to retirement and to settling into the little village where he's borrowed a cottage while his flat in town is renovated. It sounds bucolic, even if the village murderess lives right up the road. But the case never came to trial, says Basnett's nephew, lender of the cottage: She had the perfect alibi. Not entirely comforted, Basnett is more unnerved when a blizzard knocks out the power and provides a dark, snowy night just like the one six years ago when someone shot Charles Hewison through the head. It doesn't help that there's been another murder and that Pauline Hewison, once again, has motive to spare.