The first book in the Joan and Matthew Stock mystery series set in Elizabethan England.
They were a small players troupe, come to perform for a lord and his lady
And none of the rag-tag group shone more than the young players boy, with his flaxen hair and fine features. Indeed, he had won a scullery maids heart, and it was she, at cocks crow, who went searching for him in the stables where he slept. But, alas, she found him deadmurdered in a most gruesome way. And now Constable Matthew Stock must search high and low, from a Lords castle to a disreputable inn, to find the person who dealt such an ungodly blow