Foolishly, the British and Irish governments have chosen the tactless and impatient Baroness Troutbeck to chair a conference on Anglo-Irish cultural sensitivities. She instantly press-gangs Robert Amiss, her young friend and reluctant accomplice, into becoming conference organizer.

It is a conference to remember in more ways than one. When a delegate plummets off the battlements, no one, not even the authorities, can decide whether it was by accident or design. The next death poses the same problem and causes warring factions to accuse each other of murder even as the politicians are busily trying to brush everything under the carpet in the name of peace.