Snow smothers London as a cloaked portent strides through darkness to Cassandra Lipton’s gaudy little oracle’s den. Banter and bravado crumble beneath impossible cards: death, a stolen grave, a brother’s poisoned fortune, a viperous bride in black. Vision hardens into memory, memory into murder, and a silver dagger writes the future.

Agnes Hogbutter, indignant fictional courtesan turned Lady Lavender Pekoe, quarrels with her own flustered creator over scandal, destiny, and poisoned-tea murder plans. She rewrites her tawdry past as “entertainment,” blackmails Lord Pekoe into marriage via candle-and-Guinea-fowl incident, confesses to killing a scullery maid, then cheekily seizes narrative control.

Lady Lavender Pekoe spars with foolish lover Sebastian over prematurely poisoned Lord Neville, each threatening incriminating diaries while revising murder plans. As they sip suspicious, burnt‑almond tea, unseen valet Williams—true architect of arsenic, forged will, and staged double murder‑suicide—smiles outside, certain his seaside solitude is steeped and inevitable.

Grandma Laverne read omens in everything, though they never came true, until tealeaves arrived from her uppity neighbor’s English vacation. Disgusted by the taste yet entranced by the soggy patterns in the sink, she suddenly saw prophecy everywhere again—clubfooted babies, fate in the dregs—and claimed her calling back.