Sixty-six-year-old Alice Standfield is worried about the recent behavior of her petulant 16-year-old granddaughter Irene Standfield. Ever since the London blitz killed Irene’s parents, Alice has cared for her and her two older brothers, Martin and Leo, welcoming them into Elm House, the Standfield family home. In April 1947, Alice watches Irene as she dashes out the door for the third time this week, refusing to tell her grandmother where she is going. So, Alice decides to follow her surreptitiously. Grabbing the binoculars she uses for bird watching, Alice soon discovers that Irene has a boyfriend who lives in Weymouth’s Nissen-hut resettlement camp used to house Polish refugees. Late at night, there’s a knock onAlice’s door. Standing there is Krystian Rodak, Irene’s 18-year-old boyfriend, rain-drenched and frantic. The police have just arrested his father, retired Polish Major Teodor Rodak, for murdering one of the Polish refugees. Krystian and his younger sister Ania are now left alone. As minors, they will be deported to Poland if it is discovered that they are on their own. Alice insists that the two teenagers come to live with her in Elm House until everything can be sorted out. When Alice visits Rodak in jail the next day, she believes he’s innocent and is determined to help find the real murderer. And so begins a complicated and historically interesting mystery that, with the help of the Polish Government in Exile, takes Alice and her eldest grandson Leo to Poland and Czechoslovakia to learn who might be setting Teodor up for the fall. McClain’s narrative, composed in the gently paced prose of a traditional cozy (including the requisite copious amounts of comforting tea), weaves a complex web consisting of social bigotry against the immigrant Polish population, intercontinental espionage, and political complications that prevent the British from involvement in an issue that might cause conflict with the Soviets. Plus, there is a bit of not-quite hair-raising adventure and a tender romance that adds heart to the riddle at the book’s heart.