When Margaret Bellamy tells Superintendent Duncan Kincaid that she'd agreed to help Kincaid's downstairs neighbor Jasmine Dent end her cancer-stricken life but then couldn't go through with it, Kincaid wonders if somebody else assisted Jasmine's suicide--or gave her a lethal dose of morphine for less helpful reasons altogether. The potential motives of the suspects--Jasmine's ineffectual brother Theo, who's failed at one small business after another; her basement neighbor Major Keith, a devoted gardener who served in India at the same time Jasmine was born; home-help nurse Felicity Howarth, who wants to refuse her thousand-pound legacy; and Meg's grasping boyfriend Roger Leveson-Gower, who's counting on her coming into money--seem commonplace enough; but Kincaid and his sergeant Gemma James, their path lit by entries from Jasmine's journal, uncover an entirely unexpected new motive.