Hired by wealthy West Country landowner Sir Henry Coverley, private inquiry agent Jack Whicher takes on a divorce case in which he follows Sir Henry's young wife as she meets her lover for a romantic assignation in London. When one of the key witnesses mysteriously fails to attend the divorce court, an apparently simple case of adultery spirals into something darker, leading Whicher into the heart of the English countryside and to the uncovering of the most disturbing and destructive of secrets.