When Helen Lovelace dies peacefully at the age of eighty-eight, her affable grandnephew Nicholas Duffield, recently returned from Australia, and his stunning cousin, Kate Galvin, arrived from America for the funeral, stand to share a substantial inheritance. When Kate is murdered in her bed, suspicion naturally falls on Nicholas. Helen's longtime housekeeper and companion refuses to believe that the gracious young man could have committed the crime and implores her neighbor, Virginia Freer, to prevail upon her estranged husband, the exasperating charmer Felix, to prove Nick's innocence. A fanciful con artist, perpetual liar, and petty crook, Felix is fascinated by the puzzle of embittered neighbors, poisoned pet, and purloined emeralds. Virginia apprehensively observes her infuriatingly clever onetime spouse sort out the missing pieces supplied by a local jewelry maker who knows more about the emeralds than he has told the police; by a mentally retarded young man whose selflessly devoted mother harbors a deep-seated animosity toward the murdered woman; and by a successful crime writer with her own reasons for hating the beguiling Kate. When the housekeeper almost becomes a second victim, Felix astutely picks up on an obscure clue and proves what he has suspected all along.