Gordon Briggs and Wendy Lamport of the Berebery County Footpaths Society were having a quiet walk in the woods when a crow dropped a human finger in their path. Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan is called in and is reminded of the picture of the Cheshire Cat in his childhood copy ofAlice's Adventures in Wonderland. All that had been there was a head. With a grin, of course. Now, all that remained was a finger.
The closest farm belongs to George Mellot, whose family business, Mellot’s Furnishings, had just survived a takeover bid from Ivor Harbeton, the financier... who happens to have been reported missing recently.
And then, on the roof of the Mellot barn, they find a naked, headless corpse.
It takes all of Sloan’s ingenuity to solve this, his most bizarre case.