Following their wedding, Peter and Harriet retreat to Talboys, a house near Harriet's childhood home which Peter has bought for her. The previous owner, Mr. Noakes, is mysteriously absent when they arrive, and soon turns up dead in the cellar, and in a considerable amount of debt to creditors as well as his gardner, Crutchley, and niece, Miss Twitterton.
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.
One New Year's Eve, Peter and Bunter are stranded in the rural village of Fenchurch St. Paul. The rector of the local church provides hospitality, and in return Peter spends the night ringing church-bells in an ambitious nine-hour project, filling in for a ringer who is one of several villagers struck with influenza. A few months later, the husband of one of the flu victims himself dies, and in being buried with his wife, an unknown body is found to be buried atop her casket.
Victor Dean falls to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, and no one is sorry. That is until Lord Peter Wimsey joins the firm and asks some awkward questions. Finding himself involved in a web of blackmail and drugs, more must die before the sinister plot can be unravelled.
