Murder strikes where Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid least expects it. Coming home to his Hampstead flat after working all night on a case, Kincaid finds his terminally ill friend and neighbor, Jasmine Dent, has passed peacefully away in her sleep.
Kincaid quickly discovers, however, that Jasmine's death may not be as straightforward as it seems. Margaret Bellamy, a young friend of Jasmine's, tells him that Jasmine had asked for her help in committing suicide, but had changed her mind at the last minute. When autopsy results reveal that Jasmine died from a lethal dose of morphine Kincaid must discover whether Jasmine killed herself, or if someone else ended her life prematurely.
Why, he asks, would someone kill a woman who had only a few months to live? Did Jasmine's younger brother, Theo, need his inheritance to keep his small antiques shop afloat? Did her nurse, Felicity Howarth, indulge in a spot of mercy killing? Or did Margaret Bellamy's unscrupulous boyfriend, Roger, decide he couldn't wait for Margaret to come into her share of Jasmine's money?
With help from Sergeant Gemma James and Jasmine's own journals, Kincaid explores Jasmine's life from her childhood in India to the final months of her illness, discovering a hauntingly beautiful young woman, secretive and ambitious. Somewhere in her past may lie the key to her murder....