Two bodies, their throats cut with brutal precision, lie in a waste of blood in the dingy vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington.

One is an alcoholic tramp, the other, Sir Paul Berowne, is a baronet and a recently resigned Minister of the Crown. In an attempt to discover the truth Dalgliesh, with his new female assistant, arrives to begin one of the most convoluted and difficult investigations of his career, one that will expose the darker recesses of the Berowne family history, which have long lain hidden beneath a veneer of prosperous gentility.