Incomer Gloria French is at first welcomed in the Cotswold village of Piddlebury. She seems like a do-gooder par excellence, raising funds for the church and caring for the elderly. But she has a bad habit of borrowing things and not giving them back, so when she is discovered dead, poisoned by a bottle of elderberry wine, folks in the village don't mourn her passing too much. Parish councillor Jerry Tarrant hires Agatha Raisin to track down the murderer.