Horticulturist and amateur sleuth Celia Grant has no wish to accept an invitation to spend the summer at a chateau in France's Loire Valley preparing the drawings of a dead French botanist for publication. But she knows just the woman for the job: English botanist and moss expert Jane Greenwood. Jane gratefully takes on the assignment, and Celia thinks nothing more about it ... until Jane disappears. Faced with a growing number of disturbing and unanswered questions, Celia feels increasingly certain that something sinister is occurring at the Chateau de Fleury. But in trying to help her colleague, has Celia walked into unknown and terrible danger?