A Fine Place for Death

The body of a teenage girl is found in the heart of the leafy Cotswolds. As Chief Inspector Markby notes, for the Bamford community in which the murder has taken place, things will never be quite the same again. It is not long before the girl is identified: fifteen-year-old Lynne Wills who habitually drank underage in The Silver Bells pub and, on the night of her death, was seen leaving with an unknown man.
Despite his years on the local force, Markby is aware that, in common with the rest of his generation, his grasp on the lives led by Bamford's teenagers is frustratingly tenuous. For even the most respectable youth, subterfuge is second nature, their liaisons conducted expertly behind the backs of unsuspecting parents. Liaisons that can, as in the case of Lynne Wills, result in tragedy. Markby's friend, Meredith Mitchell, has been befriended by one troubled young girl, Katie Conway, heir to the dilapidated Devaux estate. On the surface Lynne and Katie have nothing in common except their age and home town. But could the insights Katie gives Meredith into her difficult family background - an aristocratic mother whose hereditary eccentricity borders on extreme instability, a doting father at the end of his tether, and a scheming resident secretary - throw some light on the background of the murdered fifteen-year-old? And, given that forensic evidence now points to Lynne Wills's murder having taken place in the Devaux family mausoleum, could these insights also shed light on her murderer?