What's the proper way for a Boston landlady to react when her most obnoxious boarder gets squashed by a subway train? Sarah Kelling doesn't mind losing Barnwell Augustus Quiffen. She already has a far nicer applicant for the drawing room suite, now that money problems have forced her to turn her historic brownstone into a boarding house. And curmudgeonly old Mr. Quiffen had been a mistake from the first with his quarrels, complaints, and endless nosey-parkering.

But then an odd eyewitness shows up on her doorstep, insisting somebody pushed Mr. Quiffen under the train, and Sarah finds herself knee-deep in yet another mystery. This time, though, Sarah needn't face her problem alone -- not while she can rely on her basement Max Bittersohn, an art expert with a very special sort of expertise....