When Judith Pearl’s husband dies, the young widow bestows one of her properties – a house in the Monk’s Foregate – on the Abbey of Shrewsbury. The only rent: a single white rose, to be delivered annually upon the day of translation of St Winifred.

But a beautiful woman with a substantial dowry must represent a target for would-be suitors. How much greater the dowry if the house should revert to her! Someone, it seems, will stop at nothing to prevent payment of the rose. In the summer of 1142 the rose is violently hacked down and lying beside it, equally brutally hacked, a murdered man is discovered.

To Brother Cadfael, as ever, falls the enquiry into this sensational crime of passion.