Another murder follows and, after all present have been questioned, several secrets become known - including the fact that one of the students is unknowingly the son of one of the lay teachers and that, through his mother, he will inherit the property, should it be closed and sold.

In this novel, Dalgliesh meets and begins a relationship with Dr Emma Lavenham, a visiting teacher from the University of Cambridge.

[1][2] In a 2001 book review for The New York Times, Sarah Ferrell wrote: "Even for P. D. James, the plot is complicated, and purists might complain that its resolution depends on the most Dickensian of coincidences.

Most of the rest of us will marvel that a story of such baroque intricacies can be resolved in any way at all, and will be dazzled by the way James keeps all her characters moving with only deliberate collisions.

"[3] Kirkus Reviews compared the book to A Certain Justice and Original Sin, writing: "... except for an uncharacteristically dewy-eyed portrait of a Cambridge don, each suspect and subplot is handled with all the penetration you'd expect in an apotheosis of the triple-decker whodunit.