The British Museum in Bloomsbury is home to one of the Caryatids, a
statue of a maiden that acted as one of the six columns in a temple
which stood on the Acropolis in ancient Athens. Lord Elgin had brought
her to London in the nineteenth century, and even though now she was
over 2,300 years old, she was still rather beautiful - and desirable.
Which is why Lord Francis Powerscourt finds himself summoned by the
British Museum to attend a most urgent matter. The Caryatid has been
stolen and an inferior copy left in her place. Powerscourt agrees to
handle the case discreetly - but then comes the first death: an employee
of the British Museum is pushed under a rush hour train before he and
the police can question him.
What had he known about the statue's disappearance? And who would want
such a priceless object? Powerscourt and his friend Johnny Fitzgerald
undertake a mission that takes them deep into the heart of London's
Greek community and the upper echelons of English society to uncover the
bizarre truth of the vanishing lady...