The 18th in the popular Victorian murder mysteries featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. The conservative clergy of the Church of England are under attack from the growing popularity of Darwinism. But was it really such a threat to Reverend Parmenter that he killed his assistant for believing in it? Superintendent Pitt is called in to prevent a scandal. Parmenter was about to be made bishop, and his assistant was an uncommonly beautiful young woman. What seems to be a tragically cut-and-dried case turns into a series of ugly revelations about the politics of the church, the dubious personal lives of its clerics, ambitions thwarted, promises unfulfilled, passions frustrated. As the Parmenter family struggles under the pressures of private grief and public duty, Pitt encounters a figure from his own past who augurs trouble wherever he goes...