Nobody believes Lord Pickhurst's new young wife is as demure and devoted as she seems, but where in the wilds of the West Country would she find a suitable paramour? Fortunately for Lady Lucille, a spate of jewel robberies gives the gossips something else to talk about. It's not so lucky for Sergeant Beddowes, and he's soon up to his neck in trouble; the bucolic backwater turns out to be as dangerous as his usual haunts in the stews of the London underworld. It begins with a simple case of robbery, but Beddowes finds himself drawn into the investigation of a brutal murder. If he can't solve the riddle of how the elderly Lord Pickhurst died, an innocent man will go to the gallows, while the guilty get away scot free.