When the pregnant teenage daughter of a wealthy newcomer to Llanelen is found dead in the nearby woods, spa owner Penny Brannigan investigates the family's suspicious financial dealings while her paramour, Detective Inspector Davies, tracks down the killer.
In the Welsh cottage she inherited from schoolteacher Emma Teasdale, Penny Brannigan discovers a package of letters that reveal Emma's lesbian affair with a Liverpool artist who was killed in a suspicious hit-and-run accident.