William Dougal, a post-graduate expert in the medieval script of Caroline Minuscule, stumbles on the garroted corpse of his tutor. He finds himself embroiled in a hunt for a cache of diamonds, in a deadly fairy story in which no-one obeys the rules. Least of all Dougal's girlfriend Amanda. As the body count rises, the couple pursue the diamonds from London to an East Anglian cathedral close, from Cambridge to a wintry Suffolk estuary.