As our story opens, we still find Inspector Blair on long leave in England. After a month in Paris and Northern France, Blair has just returned to spend the closing weeks of his leave with his sister, Peggy Markham, wife of Colonel Markham, Chief of the Police in West Hamptonshire. Again, the peaceful atmosphere of the quiet old city of Barminster is shattered by a murder mystery, and again,Inspector Blair finds himself drawn into the hunt for the criminal...