This is the eighth book in Finch's Victorian mystery series featuring private investigator Charles Lenox.
It’s 1876, and Charles Lenox, has just given up his seat in Parliament after six years, primed to return to his first profession, detection. With high hopes he and his friend Lord John Dallington have decided to create a consulting detective agency, the first of its kind. The partnership also includes two other private inquiry agents that have been friendly rivals of Lenox and Dallington in the past: Mrs. Polly Buchanan, a well born but penniless widow, and the Frenchman, LeMaire. But much to Lenox's surprise and chagrin, his new venture is ridiculed and belittled in the press, with slighting comments from Scotland Yard inspectors whom he considered friends and colleagues. Months pass, and while the other partners are attracting business to the firm, Lenox has not a single client to show for himself.
Then late one night Scotland Yard shows up on Lenox's doorstep. Inspector Thomas Jenkins, foremost of Lenox's detractors, is found murdered near Regent’s Park. In fact, his body lies almost at the doorstep of the Marquess of Wakefield, a peer of unsavory reputation whom both the police and Lenox have pursued in the past without success. Jenkins, inexplicably, has left precise instructions that in the event of his own death, Charles Lenox must be called in to consult on the case. As Lenox and Dallington begin their investigation the mystery thickens as they discover Lord Wakefield disappeared shortly before Jenkins' murder. Lenox perseveres on the trail in spite of threats against himself and his family, uncovering a scandal that reaches into the highest echelons of society.
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