The sequestered peace of the Canterbury Cathedral community is shattered by the arrival of a poison pen letter. Reluctantly dragged from his administrative duties to investigate the allegations of gross sexual misconduct between a recently widowed parson and his female assistant, senior Church official Richard Harrison accidentally stumbles upon the horrific scene of a double killing. In doing so, he is set on a lonely, tortuous path to discover the identity of the anonymous letter-writer, whose malicious libels apparently precipitated the tragic deaths. Faced with a seemingly motiveless crime, Harrison follows a maze of leads in which the proposed sale of a 200-year-old charity cottage and the short, violent life of Christopher Marlowe, the sixteenth-century poet and playwright, appear to twine about the bizarre happenings in a country parish.