Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone...

When a young widow is found dead in a burned-out glove workshop on the outskirts of Woodstock, everyone assumes arson gone wrong. But Nora Kinlan's death doesn't add up, and a two-year-old girl found alive in the rubble keeps repeating a single word nobody can explain.

As autumn closes in and the town prepares for the Michaelmas show, Hester Croft and Gertie Bundle unpick a web of secrets that reaches far beyond a failed gloving business, from poached hides and forged game books to a soldier who was supposed to be dead. Six people knew Nora was planning to talk. All six were out that night. And every one of them is lying about why.