Writer Mark Easterbrook has a vested interest in solving the murder of a priest. That's because Mark himself is under suspicion. But to save his reputation and put the real killer behind bars, he'll have to go through a mysterious list of names that's suddenly turned up and may hold the key to the murderer's identity.

While English professor Loretta Lawson is attending a conference in Paris, she stays the night in the flat of a friend's acquaintance. She discovers a sleeping man in one of the bedrooms, and the next morning finds the man gone, but the bed soaked with blood. Returning to Cambridge, she begins to suspect her friend's acquaintance, and others on the staff of the college, are involved with the missing (murdered?) man, and decides to investigate for herself.

An apparently happy wife in an English village has a relationship with a local aristocrat's daughter.