February, 1932: the highly unpopular Joan Hexham, 'the spider at the centre of a web of village gossip', is killed on stage during an amateur performance of Hamlet. An accident, surely. Nobody would be brazen enough to commit murder in full view of fifty witnesses in Lower Addenham village hall - or would they? The local vicar, Reverend Lucian Shaw, is asked by the police to lend moral support to the villagers during their investigation...