Her new neighbour in what was James Lacey's cottage, Emma Comfrey, applies for the job of secretary in the office, and, uncharacteristically assertive, gets it.

She has retired from the Ministry of Defence, where she has survived a Superglue investigation when she sabotages a popular colleagues’ computer.

The agency's first case is a missing cat, and the second is to guard a divorcée's daughter, Cassandra, who has received a death threat.

Agatha falls in love with Sir Charles Fraith again, and with the chief suspect, Jeremy Laggat-Brown.

But she finds out that Harrison Peterson's death is murder not suicide, and disproves Jeremy Laggat-Brown's alibi - he has hired a drunken dropout to impersonate him in Paris.