It was a crime of passion in onc of England's great houses, an open-and-shut case.

But thirty years later, when the convicted nanny is freed, then spirited off to America before she can talk, Yorkshire's Superintendent Dalziel retums to the scene of the crime with Inspector Pascoe, determined to dig up the corpus delecti he investigated a generation before. Did the wrong aristocrat hang?

Dalziel and Pascoe find decades-old clues that implicate a member of the royal family. When one of their prime leads is found dead, Dalziel is put "on leave" - and heads for New York to learn what the Nanny knows.

Back home, Pascoe walks a thin line, quietly pursuing a case someone is trying to bury. Stiff upper lips do tell tale, but Dalziel and Pascoe discover on both sides of the Atlantic that it's hell on those trying to unearth the truth.