It was an unusual friendship - two young men on the lowest rung of the Foreign office ladder. Timothy Wycliffe was grandson of a marquess, and son of a man tipped to be the next Foreign Secretary. Peter Proctor was a dullish, respectable middle-aged young man from Dulwich College. On the face of it they had little in common, but when Timothy was bludgeoned to death it left a life-lasting impression on ‘Plod’ Proctor.

Many years later the murder came back to haunt him. For there were things unsolved, unexplained about it, not least that although everyone knew the murderer’s name, he had never been caught. At first idly, then with a greater compulsion, Peter Proctor began to dig into the old tragedy, uncovering anomalies, family scandals, and a whole train of events that finally led him to the murderer.