The discovery of a five-year-old corpse of a woman brings the pair to Holm Coultram College, a setting in which gruff, uneducated Dalziel couldn't feel more out of place. Liberal, cultured pascoe, on the other hand, is in his element. There is the unexpected pleasure of discovering an "old flame" on the college staff. And, for once, time is not pressing. The case, so it seems, can be taken "leisurely, almost academically." Simultaneously, however, an academic scandal erupts when a lecturer is accused of falsifying the grades of a student alleged to have been his mistress. A second desth results, then a third, and the detectives suddenly find themselves immersed in a "storm-battered, thunder-thrashed, Dalziel-haunted sea of troubles." Only after suffering an excess of verbal and physical abuse are Dalziel and Pascoe able (with a little help from the local voyeur) to untangle the dismaying complications that follow and arrive at a startling conclusion.