When lovely Cara Quayne drops to the floor dead after drinking the ritual wine at the House of the Sacred Flame, she was having a religious experience of a sort unsuspected by the other initiates.

Journalist Nigel Bathgate lets curiosity get the better of him when he decides to attend services at The Temple of the Sacred Flame.

As part of the ritual, Miss Quayne drinks from a goblet of wine, seemingly enters ecstasy and falls down dead.

He murdered Cara Quayne because she knew he stole the bonds from the priest's safe and also because he would receive the bulk of her estate through his own stake in the church.

Ogden was the last person to drink from the goblet during the ceremony, which gave him the most advantageous position to slip the poison into the wine.

Despite this praise, the review concluded, "Experienced detective story readers will not have a great deal of difficulty in spotting the murderer.

[4][5] The novel dispenses with Marsh's usual introductory section establishing her characters, their relationships to each other and motives, plunging straight into journalist Nigel Bathgate's spur-of-the-moment attendance at The Temple of the Sacred Flame, where a sudden death takes place.

[6] A dramatisation by John Tidyman of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre in September 1969, with Peter Howell as Alleyn and Gary Watson as Nigel Bathgate.