A photographer is found dead beneath a line of fresh prints. The police say she had it coming. Two unlikely detectives must bring the truth out of the dark.

Miss Ada Tew has photographed every wedding, fete and funeral in Woodstock for fifty-two years. Her farewell exhibition was meant to be her goodbye to the town. Instead she is found on her darkroom floor, with ten photographs pegged on the line above her. Someone printed them while she lay there. The discovery pulls Hester Croft, sharp-tongued and not in the habit of being mistaken, and Gertie Bundle, landlady of the Old Pyed Bull, into their fourth investigation together.

Inspector Wallace of the Oxfordshire CID decides Ada was a blackmailer who pushed somebody too far. Hester knew Ada all her life, and she does not believe a word of it. One picture has already been taken down from the exhibition wall. Half the town saw it before it went, and nobody will say what was in it.