Autumn has come and gone on Scotland's Isle of Glenroth, and the islanders gather for the Tartan Ball, the annual end-of-tourist-season gala. Spirits are high until an unexpected turn of events takes the floor. Kate Hamilton - tourist, and antiques dealer - has hardly unpacked when the next morning a body is found, murdered in a reenactment of an infamous unsolved murder described in the novel - and the only clue to the killer's identity lies in a curiously embellished antique casket.