George Conway was a junior master at Spey College. The Head considered him a reliable history specialist and a useful games coach, but his fellow masters thought him rude and insufferably presumptuous and the boys called him a mean and treacherous beast. But, as Inspector Gavin said, 'Public schoolboys don't murder the staff'. Mrs Bradley isn't so certain; at least she feels sure they know more than they will say. The erudite Micklethwaite, for example, an expert in judo, refuses to speak of the abominable Conway, who accused him of cheating in the exam for the Divinity Prize. Mrs Bradley has to use tact and guile - not to mention a bit of black magic - to make boys and masters tell the whole story.