An actress dies while preparing to tread the boards at the famous Theatre Royal in Bath. Her ex-lover insists that she was murdered. And perhaps he was right. Flora Messel had enemies and she had always been prepared to play cat and mouse to get what she wanted. When the Shepard Agency is hired to investigate La Messel's death, events conspire to entangle them in a cat's cradle of mutual disloyalties - with undercurrents of malice and distrust . . .