When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighborhood. Carl needs cash, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews: Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one. Mistake number two was keeping his father’s bizarre collection of homeopathic “cures” that he found in the medicine cabinet, including a stash of controversial diet pills. Mistake number three was selling 50 of those diet pills to a friend, who is then found dead.

In the waning months of World War II, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood. The subterranean space becomes their “secret garden,” where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands. The friends come together once again to recall their days in the tunnel for the detective investigating the case. Is the truth buried among these aging friends and their memories?

A female vicar named Sarah Hussain is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham vicarage. Maxine, the gossipy cleaning woman who finds the body, happens to also be in the employ of former Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford and his wife. When called on by his old deputy, Wexford, who has taken to reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a retirement project, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators.

When their grandmother dies, Grace and Andrew Easton inherit her sprawling, book-filled London home. Rather than sell it, the adult siblings move in together. The arrangement is unusual yet ideal for the affectionate pair --- until the day Andrew brings home a new boyfriend. When he and Andrew witness their friend’s murder outside a London nightclub, James begins to unravel. What happens next will change the lives of everyone in the house.

Life for the residents and servants of Hexam Place appears placid and orderly on the outside: drivers take their employers to and from work, dogs are walked, flowers are planted in gardens, and Christmas candles lit uniformly in windows. But beneath this tranquil veneer, the upstairs-downstairs relationships are set to combust.

Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired, and he and his wife now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. For all the benefits of a more relaxed way of life, Wexford misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything.

When Stuart Font throws a housewarming party, he invites all the residents of his new building. But careful planning can only get a person so far. As it turns out, this party will be one everyone remembers.