The first instalment in the acclaimed Lydmouth crime series, from the prize-winning author of the Richard and Judy Book Club novel,The American Boy. Workmen in the small market town of Lydmouth are demolishing an old cottage. A sledgehammer smashes into what looks like a solid wall. Instead, layers of wallpaper conceal the door of a locked cupboard which holds a box - and in the box is the skeleton of a young baby. Items within the box suggest that the baby was entombed early in the nineteenth century, but when another man is also found dead, the evidence suggests that the baby's death is more recent than it seems and that a killer is on the loose. Journalist Jill Francis, newly arrived from London, has her first assignment.