Richard Harrison has spent most of his life as a spy. But that's all behind him; he wants nothing more than a quiet retirement in the cathedral town of Canterbury. But the past has a way of refusing to stay buried - something Harrison is forced to remember when an unknown young woman turns up on his doorstep, bearing a message from her late father, a refugee from Hitler's Germany, and an expert in antiques. It's a message that Harrison doesn't want to hear. And he particularly doesn't want to believe it has anything to do with the recent suicide of an elderly, notoriously dithering parish priest.