When the body of Lulu Starewski, an elderly eccentric antique dealer, is found in her home in an Oxfordshire village by her friend Tessa Cox, Detective Chief Inspector Roger Hayes is soon on the scene. A specialist in Russian Icons, Lulu owned a gallery in London, which its manager, Raoul Musset, seems destined to inherit, along with her London flat. That is, until an arson attack destroys the gallery.