Harriet Vane travels to Oxford to attend The Gaudy, a reunion party at her fictional college of Shrewsbury. While there, she encounters two vicious letters targeting women at the college, including one referring to her murder accusation of several years earlier. A few weeks later she's called back by the Dean to investigate continuing disruptions, including many more poison pen letters, vandalism of a renovation of the library, and an electricity outage. She meets Peter's nephew Saint-George, and has another male student develop a crush on her, and a student at the college is driven to attempt suicide. Eventually she reluctantly invites Peter in to aid in the investigation, which turns on behavior in academia.