It is October 1936. Lord Edward Corinth is invited by his friend Joe Weaver, the press lord and close friend of the British royal family, to recover certain letters stolen from the king's intimate friend Wallis Simpson. There is no mystery about who has taken these letters - a woman called Mrs Raymond Harkness, a former mistress of the king and a close friend of Edward's.

When Edward goes down to Haling, the country house of conservative MP Leo Scannon where Mrs Harkness is also a house guest, he is far from easy in his mind at the task before him, but he cannot guess that retrieving stolen goods is to be complicated by murder...