After leaving London for Bath, you will inevitably stop in Cromberry, an old city on the river. Here, in a shelter, the nanny of the lady who died under strange circumstances, Mrs. Dreemlein, spends her final years. In the waters of the Crom, the poacher Podrick Plumb sets his nets, and Judge Hawxley investigates a case of terrible murders of young girls. Here everyone risks becoming a suspect, because the killer may have dozens of masks, hundreds of appearances—switching them just as easily as a maid changes withered bouquets in vases…