Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.

It's Christmas 1909, and for once Lady Hardcastle - respectable gentlewoman, amateur spy - and her lady's maid, Florence Armstrong, are setting sleuthing aside. They are invited to the festivities up at The Grange, as guests of Sir Hector and Lady Farley-Stroud. But barely have corks been popped and parlour games played when a mysterious crime comes to light.

"Als ich von Tante Dimitys Tod hörte, war ich fassungslos. Nicht weil sie tot war, sondern weil ich bis dahin nicht wusste, dass es sie gegeben hatte." Lori Shepherd ist frisch geschieden und pleite. Als auch noch ihre geliebte Mutter stirbt, glaubt sie vollends den Boden unter den Füßen zu verlieren. Da erhält sie die Nachricht von einer Anwaltskanzlei: Lori soll das Erbe ihrer Tante Dimity antreten. Hat es Tante Dimity, die Figur aus den Gutenacht-Geschichten ihrer Kindheit, wirklich gegeben?

Selchester Castle in 1953 sits quiet and near-empty, its corridors echoing with glories of the past. Or so it seems to intelligence officer Hugo Hawksworth, wounded on a secret mission and now reluctantly assuming an altogether less perilous role at Selchester.