His wife, Mildred, and his daughters (Sarah and Susan) live in Pankot while Colonel Layton's stepmother, known as Auntie Mabel, occupies the family estate at Rose Cottage.

Now an army captain, Ronald Merrick, a self-made man of the lower middle class and the former police official in charge of the Daphne Manners case, begins to insinuate himself subtly into the Layton family.

Susan, the younger Layton sister, driven by a sense of her own nothingness, marries Teddie Bingham, a colourless and conventional officer in the prestigious Muzzy Guides regiment.

At the wedding reception, the Nawab of Mirat becomes a victim of heightened security when he is denied entrance to his own property as he is an Indian.

When the newlyweds are being seen off at the railway station, Shalini Gupta Sen appears and makes a scene, begging Merrick to reveal the whereabouts of her nephew, Hari Kumar.

Nigel Rowan, an officer serving in the civil service, takes Lady Manners to observe the debriefing of Hari Kumar, who was tortured and jailed after the rape of Lady Manners's niece, Daphne, and who has been held in prison for a year under the Defence of India Act for alleged political crimes.

Teddie and Merrick are sent to the front in Manipur against the Japanese and their surrogates, the Indian National Army (known as "Jiffs" among the British).

After an unsuccessful evening on the town, Clark takes Sarah to the Indian side of Calcutta, where they attend a party at the home of a wealthy socialite.

On her way back to Pankot, Sarah encounters Count Bronowsky, a White Russian emigre who is the Nawab's wazir or chief advisor, whom she had met during Susan and Teddie's wedding.

They are there to meet Mohammed Ali Kasim, a prominent politician who is being released after a period of imprisonment under the Defence of India Act.

Coming unhinged, she makes a ring of fire with paraffin and places the baby within it, in imitation of a native treatment of scorpions that she witnessed as a child.

The review summarized that Scott's "view of the crippling illusionary quests of men and nations, his ability to recreate a culture and a time, continue to mark him as a novelist of importance.