Five ladies sit up to catch an intruder. By morning, there is a corpse in the parlour.

Someone has been walking through Mrs. Honoria Ballard's Bloomsbury townhouse after midnight.

Footsteps cross empty rooms. Furniture moves while the household sleeps. Even locked doors seem unable to keep the intruder out. Her nephew calls it confusion. Mrs. Ballard calls in the Ladies.

Clara Wetherly and her formidable companions expect an uncomfortable vigil, several pots of tea, and?at worst?the exposure of a very ordinary deception.

They do not expect to find a dead stranger in the parlour.

The front door is still chained. The windows are fastened. No one could have entered, and no one could have left. Yet somebody inside the house is lying about where they were?and Marmalade, recently released from the coal cellar and in no mood to forgive anyone, may be the only witness who knows the truth.

With Inspector Redgrave nowhere in sight, Clara and the Ladies must reconstruct the night themselves. Before Scotland Yard arrives, they will uncover one false haunting, one long-buried crime, and a murderer who has been standing among them all along.

And when a certain silver-buttoned inspector finally appears, he may discover that the Ladies have done rather more than keep watch.

A witty, atmospheric Victorian cozy mystery filled with locked-room intrigue, sharp-eyed women, household secrets, quiet romantic tension, and one magnificently indignant orange cat.

The Ladies, the Cat and the Corpse is a Clara Wetherly companion novella set after Death at Her Majesty's. The mystery stands alone, but Clara and Inspector Redgrave's developing relationship is best enjoyed in series order.