Lord Edward Corinth returns to London after six months in New York to find his partner journalist Verity Browne, insisting he investigate a murder in Madrid. It is 1936 and Spain is about to erupt into civil war. Verity is now foreign correspondent for a national newspaper and passionately committed to defending the Spanish republic against the Fascist threat. Her lover, David Griffiths-Jones, a senior figure in the Communist Party, has been convicted of killing a fellow Party worker in the hills outside Madrid and Verity appeals to Edward to help save him from the firing squad, even though she knows he sees him as his rival in love. Against the odds, he succeeds but is suddenly called back to England before he can tidy up the loose ends. In London Edward becomes embroiled in the investigation of a second murder, that of a banker who had been his contemporary at Eton. Edward uncovers a connection between his dead friend and the victim of the unsolved murder in Spain. Both had been at school with him and there is a third man - another Eton contemporary - whose earlier death in a shooting accident on safari in Kenya now arouses his suspicions. Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne, attracted to each other but at odds politically, join in an awkward alliance to discover the truth. Political and personal danger surrounds them and there is no guarantee that justice will be done and murder avenged.