Wolcum Yole — Susan Alexander

Seven thousand, six hundred fairy lights, a rare snowdrop, and murder.It's Christmastime at Beaumatin, the Cotswold estate of the Barons Raynham. Oxford Professor Maggie Eliot is looking forward to spending the festive season there with her husband Thomas, who is also the current baron.Unfortunately, Thomas' daughter from his first marriage, Constance, has chosen to have a Christmas wedding at Beaumatin. Constance hates Maggie and is doing her best to ruin her holiday. First she has invited her Swedish fiancé's family to stay, which requires Maggie to act as hostess to ten houseguests who are not only strangers, but also not all fluent in English. Then Constance asks a smarmy society reporter and his distinctly odd photographer to cover the wedding. Include a veritable forest of Christmas trees and thousands of fairy lights and Thomas is predictably grumpy and in no mood to be sympathetic to Maggie's difficulties or hear about an unusual snowdrop she has found blooming in the estate's gardens.Then one of the wedding guests is murdered and the police decide Thomas and Maggie have the strongest motives for the crime. Maggie knows she was not the murderer and is convinced that Thomas is innocent as well. But with larceny, infidelity and blackmail complicating her efforts to identify the actual killer, Maggie is afraid it may just be her worst Christmas ever.