On a bitter winter's afternoon in London, Alberta Mansbridge sets the table with teacups for nine, mulling over the guests who will be arriving within the hour: her accountant and the ex-jailbird Barry; her nephew and his ghastly new flibberty-jibbet of a wife; the Italian playboy, the family doctor, the manager of her father's company and dear old Myra, with whom she had so recently fallen out... Alberta returns upstairs to get herself ready.

Yet as tea-time draws nigh and the guests' knocking goes unanswered, they are soon to discover that their host has been murdered-worse still, that the killer must have been one of their trusted number, let in early by Alberta. Faced with eight suspects whose alibis and motives are steeped in mystery, Inspector Corby joins a case in which the truth is trickling away down cold London streets and through the Yorkshire roots of Alberta's past.

First published in 1973 but written in the vintage mystery mode, Lettice Cooper draws on a life lived in Leeds and London to deliver an authentic, literary detective story with a well-brewed psychological depth.