When Superintendent Duncan Kincaid takes Gemma, Kit and Toby to visit his family in Cheshire, Gemma is soon entranced with Nantwich’s pretty buildings and the historic winding canal, and young Kit is instantly smitten with his cousin Lily.
But their visit is marred when, on Christmas Eve, Duncan’s sister discovers a mummified infant’s body interred in the wall of an old barn, a tragedy hauntingly echoed by the recent drowning of Peter Llewellyn, a schoolmate of Lilly’s.
Meanwhile, on her narrow boat, former social worker Annie Lebow is living a life of self-imposed isolation, preparing for a lonely Christmas, made more disturbing by an unexpected meeting earlier in the day.....
