Pineford is a small Victorian provincial town that carries more history than its size would suggest — a plague epidemic, intrigues among the ruling families, and more recently the discovery of Evie Roots, everyone's favorite aristocrat, dead. The town that looks quiet and peaceful from a distance is something else entirely when you get close enough to examine it. Piecing together the events that led to this specific murder means understanding how everything that came before in Pineford's history converged to produce it.