"Three on a Match" Meaning and Synopsis

“Bad things happen in threes.” 

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 This is a modernization of the phrase “three on a match,” a superstition dating from the Crimean War that was popularized during the First World War. It was purported that if three soldiers shared a match for their cigarettes, the length of time it would take for all three to be lit was long enough for an enemy sniper to pinpoint their shared location. The flame from the first man sealed the fates of the second and third who were illuminated by the light. 

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“Bad things happen in threes.”

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 All the inhabitants of Heathbury whisper this foreboding saying after the death of a glittering socialite at a spring fete is followed by the murder of another village resident. Newspaper heiress Theodora Raffington has taken it upon herself to report on the murders for the local paper, despite the warnings of her stoic lifelong friend, Constable Thomas Spode, and her fiancé, Lord Edmund Cheltenham. By nosing into the secret life of the victim, she inches closer to becoming the third casualty of a hidden marksman.