Elizabeth Lemarchand

A sleepy English village is scandalised when the eccentric housekeeper at the vicarage publicly announces the disappearance of a priceless medieval chalice. No one admits to having ever seen the chalice, yet the very next day the old woman is found brutally murdered. Superintendent Pollard and Inspector Toye of Scotland Yard untangle a web of suspicion and deceit, and unearth the remnants of long-ago violence, as they reveal the dark secrets of Abercombe.

Affacombe is a picturesque English village, sleepy and traditional, populated by the usual cast of characters - the retired Colonel and his wife, the scholarly vicar, the lady historian/writer, the blunt and bossy spinster with her fingers in all the church pies, the gossipy pub-keeper. And a quiet, neat, and very efficient blackmailer, with a long history of successful low-level extortion. When her body is found in the river, it's up to Detective Inspector Pollard and Sgt Toye to decide which of her victims is the guilty party. But as Scotland Yard tries to build a case against a series of unshakeable alibis, someone's story starts to fall apart at the seams.

Superintendent Pollard must shatter the veneer of respectability surrounding members of an upper-class English family from the country, all prime suspects in the mysterious death of their long-time housekeeper