The Hon. Phryne Fisher, languid and slightly bored at the start of 1929, is engaged to find out if the antique-shop son of a Pre-Raphaelite model has died by homicide or suicide. He has some strange friends – a Balkan adventuress, a dilettante with a penchant for antiquities, a Classics professor, a medium and a mysterious supplier who arrives after dark on a motorbike. At the same time she is asked to discover the fate of the lost illegitimate child of a rich old lady, to the evident dislike of the remaining relatives.