Detective Inspector Hardcastle ruffles feathers in a sleepy Hampshire village when he investigates the murder of a local girl in August 1917. The head of the CID at Scotland Yard sends Divisional Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle and Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott of the Whitehall Division of the Metropolitan Police to a small Hampshire village, to investigate the murder of a local girl. For once, Hardcastle has plenty of suspects. Was the murderer one of Daisy Salter's many suitors? Was it the shifty individual who left the local pub and disappeared the moment he saw Hardcastle? Or could it have been Daisy's own father? In an entirely different world from London, Hardcastle is forced to adapt to the slower pace of country life, and he soon finds he is ruffling feathers as he carries out his investigations in his own inimitable fashion.