It all began with a straw hat. A large, broad-brimmed hat, dyed in an elusive mixture of colours to produce a distinctive shade of pale gold, it was presented to Emily Pearson by her long-time friend and employer Mabel Arkwright, milliner and modiste, whose establishment under the name of The Bandbox was situated in a discreet corner of the West End of London. And it was to her employer - known to her clientele as Madam Arkwright - that Emily owed not only the gift of The Golden Straw, as it had been named, but eventually the business itself, for her friend had more and more come to rely upon her as time went by. After Mabel Arkwright"s death, Emily, exhausted by the extra work that had fallen upon her shoulders and exasperated by Dr Steve Montane, her late employer"s young and plain-spoken physician, took herself off to the South of France to stay at an hotel previously and warmly recommended by Mrs Arkwright. It was now 1880, and many fashionable guests were staying at the hotel...