#2 in series: When beautiful Barbara Longman is found dead in a meadow, uprooted wild flowers strewn about her and, in her hand, a single marigold, Inspector Joe Rafferty at first believes the murder may be the work of the serial killer over the county border in Suffolk. But then he meets the victim's family. Everyone, it seems, had a motive: Henry the grieving widower; the victim's brother-in-law, Charles Shore the ruthless tycoon; Henry's first wife, the Bohemian Anne, who has lost the custody of her teenage son to the saintly Barbara. Even the long-dead patriarch, Maximillian Shore, seems, to Rafferty, to have some involvement in the murder, though how, or why, Rafferty doesn't understand until he finally grasps the truth behind the reasons for the killing. A truth sad and dreadful which had been evident from the start, if only he had had the eyes to see.