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Mistress of Mairsford Manor, Rosalie, Lady Benedict St Maure, a lovely, but reclusive, 40-year-old widow, and Charles Hargreaves, 48, a small-town solicitor, who has unexpectedly inherited the title and the estate of Staplewood Park, seem unlikely detectives, but together with Rosalie’s sister-in-law, Amanda. Lady Coverdale, they set about trying to discover the identity of a young man, found collapsed and injured, on Rosalie’s drive. He gradually recovers his health, but not his memory, either of the events that brought him to Mairsford, or even of his own name! A gold signet ring engraved with the letters MS, his only possession. Rosalie decides to call him Matthew.

Meanwhile a Bristol solicitor, Steven Pettigrew, is endeavoring to ascertain the whereabouts of a Matthew Stuart, who apparently arrived on a ship from New York, but has not been heard of since. The discovery of his gold watch at a pawnbroker’s shop, makes Pettigrew fear the worst. In a book on English castles and great houses, found in Mr. Stuart’s cabin trunk, Pettigrew discovers a folded paper, marking the page for “Coverdale Hall” and writes to the marquis in the hope of acquiring more information.

Events at Staplewood have taken another turn, when an accident to Lady Julia, Rosalie’s niece, leads to the discovery of an underground chamber. Could this be the key to the first Lord Hargreaves rumored, but missing, fortune?