Gemma Duncan & the boys are back in their Notting Hill house & enjoying a quiet spring in London when Gemma receives a plea for help from her friend & neighbor Erika Rosenthal. Erika has never shared much of her past other than telling Gemma that she & her husband came to London before the war as refugees from the emerging Nazi regime in Germany. Her husband was a historian & was found murdered in a local park. His death was never solved. Now Erika tells Gemma that a necklace from her past has come up for auction -- a necklace which was taken from her. Now Erika asks Gemma to find out where the necklace came from. As Gemma works backwards interviewing the staff at the auction house & looking into the records of David Rosenthals death her viewpoint is interwoven with Erikas vivid memories of her life as a young woman in London during & after the war. Then a young woman at the auction house is murdered & suddenly the case becomes very much centred in the present.