The library of St Agatha's, Cambridge, houses an unrivalled and according to scholars, uninteresting collection of seventeenth century volumes. It also contains a dead student. Tragic and accidental, even if gossip hints that Philip Skellow had been engaged in stealing books rather than acquiring knowledge when he'd slipped. Only Imogen Quy, the university's nurse, has doubts - until another student is found in an ornamental fountain.