During the hot summer of 1983, a three week British Council summer school is held on the campus of the University of Reading. English language teachers from all over the world, mostly young women, have come to improve themselves professionally and to experience British life and culture. A week before the course ends, the body of a middle-aged tutor is found spread-eagled below the window of his fifth floor room in the Hall of Residence where the summer school is based. A letter addressed to him threatening to reveal a secret is found in the room and, as there is no sign of a struggle or of any intruder, suicide seems the probable cause of death. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Healey is given charge of the case. The dead man has widowed a beautiful young Filipina, to whom Healey is immediately attracted. At various times, drugs, sex and money all offer to explain the tutor's death but on the last night of summer school something is said that turns the whole case on its head...