The Sussex Cuckoo

The wedges are fixed for the Sussex Cuckoo. Hurry if you would be in time. Even then I fear that you may be too late. Terms as arranged. NEHEMIAH.

Thus reads an announcement in theTimesAgony Column, catching the eye of Anthony Lotherington Bathurst on the morning he visits botanist James Frith. Frith is the owner of valuable Jacobite antiquities and has been receiving threatening letters. The next day his corpse is found. How did Frith end up without a mark on his body, yet dead from tetanus poisoning? Things look even more serious for Bathurst when a second death occurs . . .