India, 1922. In Panikhat, 50 miles from Calcutta, the wives of officers in the Bengal Greys have been dying violently, one every year and always in March. All the deaths are bizarre and seem accidental. The only link between them is the small red roses that mysteriously appear on the women’s graves on the anniversaries of their deaths. The first victim perished in a fire, the second was bitten by a cobra, another was thrown off her horse into a ravine, while the fourth drowned. When the fifth, the pretty young wife of Captain Somersham, is found with her wrists cut, the Governor of Bengal refuses to accept a suicide verdict and calls for help from the reluctant Joe Sandilands, currently on secondment to the Bengal police.
