It was the custom and time-honoured privilege of Mrs. Bale, a cottager in the remote English village of Dellmead, to decorate the church for Sunday worship. One Saturday afternoon when busying herself with her flowers and water-can she is shocked to see revealed by the mellow October sunshine the figure of a strange woman reclining on the slab of a canopied tomb where, according to tradition, had once lain a carved effigy. Boiling with indignation at this desecration, Mrs. Bale advances and shakes the recumbent figure, only to realise with horror that the woman is dead. But that is only the first of many tragic happenings in a case that runs curiously parallel to an old local legend; a case that is to baffle even the keen brain of Desmond Merrion and sorely try the patience of the unimaginative Inspector Arnold before it reaches a satisfactory conclusion.