The Elizabethan house of Bracketts is about to be turned into a museum - but the transition is far from smooth. Carole had been reluctant to join the Bracketts Board and now she realizes that she should have listened to her instinct. The simmering tension between the Board members is about to boil over. A human skeleton is discovered in the kitchen garden and before too long there is a second body, not yet cold.
The first message sent to Tom Thorne's phone was just a picture - the blurred image of a man's face, but Thorne had seen enough dead bodies to know that the man was no longer alive. But who was he? Who sent the photograph? And why? While the technical experts attempt to trace the sender, Thorne searches the bulletins for a reported death that matches the photograph. Then another picture arrives.