Three tales of murder and duplicity intertwine in a story as complex and atmospheric as the great Victorian masterpieces of suspense. Dr. Courtine, an unworldly academic, is invited to visit an old friend, Austin, in his home in the Cathedral close of Thurchester. On the night Courtine arrives, Austin tells him the mystery of the town ghost, a story of deadly rivalry and murder two centuries old, which captures Courtine's donnish imagination, as it is perhaps intended to do. Courtine's real reason for the visit is to pursue his research into an even older mystery in the labyrinthine Cathedral library. If he can track down an elusive 11th century manuscript, he hopes to unwittingly enmeshed in a sequence of terrible events, and becomes a witness to a murder that seems never to have been committed.