Jimmy Fongand Madeline Villiers battle through the jungle in Borneo, searching for a rare Orchid, the Yellow Roth, worth at least a hundred thousand pounds. They find it and Madeline smuggles it back to Britain, relishing the excitement and adrenalin of the operation. Munro Hilliard is hosting the ‘Midsomer Malham Annual Flower and Orchid Show’. Margaret Winstanley, Professor of Botany at Oxford University, accompanied by her protégé, Jonathan Makepeace, is judging the orchids presented by the fiercely competitive members of the Midsomer Malham Orchid Society. Harry Rose is the local handyman. He arrives at Madeline’s house to carry out repairs, only to find her dead in her living-room chair. It appears that she was about to leave for Switzerland for her own wedding. Henry Plummer is later found dead in his garden shed by his wife. He appears to have hung himself after having found his entire orchid collection destroyed with weedkiller. But was it really a suicide?