Leaving the wake of Oswald Finch, old friend and pathologist to the PCU, Arthur Bryant sees a middle-aged lady coming out of a pub in a backstreet, apparently drunk. She is next seen on a slab in the mortuary and the pub has mysteriously disappeared.

Arthur starts to disbelieve his own eyes, as the pub he remembers her coming out of was demolished in 1925. In addition, he has lost Oswald's ashes. Is he finally succumbing to old age and an unhinged mind?

However, he has a hunch and, looking through recent sudden deaths, it appears that a number of women of similar profiles have died in or around old London pubs. Is this a new, bizarre, serial killer at work, eliminating harmless middle aged women with a penchant for conspiracy theories? Arthur Bryant and John May with their long suffering PCU team go searching for a killer