A Wretched Folly

Traveling to the ancestral Matlock estate with her husband, Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, is finally able to confront her greatest foe: the pinery. Forced to endure an endless parade of pineapple-inflected dishes early in her marriage, she has devised a scheme to sabotage the despised fruit, which she can now carry out at long last.

Good gracious, no. Bea does not really mean the plants any harm, and approaching the building on a summer morning, she is struck by how lovely it is, with its elegant portico and high arching windows. It is a shame, then, that she stumbles across a slain corpse almost immediately upon entering.

Devil it! A dead body is the last thing she wants to contend with! She’s in the country — nearly a hundred miles from London and her recent harrowing experience. Having proven to the beau monde that she is not guilty of multiple homicides, she is eager to put some distance between her and her reputation as the murder duchess. All she wants to do is enjoy some fresh air and ingratiate herself with her new staff, an effort that would not be aided by accusing the servants of lying — although they obviously are, which the constable will figure out quickly enough if he is not a dunderhead.

Oh, but maybe he is a dunderhead and maybe the drawing in the victim’s pocket actually is a treasure map to a lost viking horde and maybe the murder duchess is a little too set in her ways to allow a killer to go free — or strike again.