Marlborough Hall, 1154. According to British lore, this ancient palace once hosted a torrid love affair between young King Henry II and a teenaged Rosamund, right under the patrician nose of his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. To keep his mistress safe from his scorned wife, Henry built Rosamund a house once could only reach by labyrinth-and only then with a spool of thread. But his titanic efforts proved futile when he found the girl poisoned to death-and...

Newlyweds Charles and Kate Sheridan move to Bishop's Keep, Kate's ancestral home, and agree to hold an automobile exhibition and balloon race attended by Europe's gentry, but the gala soon turns deadly.

Once again, the powers-that-be ask liberal aristocrat Lord Charles Sheridan to investigate a crime, here the detonation of a bomb in Hyde Park that kills a suspected anarchist seemingly en route to Buckingham Palace shortly after the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.