The story is:
Adam Dalgliesh goes to the country to disposed of his aunt’s cottage and possessions. She died, and it’s all his now. Inspector Rickards is investigating a serial-murderer who kills women. Adam has dinner with Alice Mair, a famous cook who writes book about it and they share the same publisher, and a few other people. Alex Mair runs Larksoken, a nuclear power station. Hillary Robarts works there too and they were once lovers. He doesn’t want her anymore and is about to move to London for a new job, but she seems obsessed with marrying him and start a family together. Meg Dennison lives in a cottage nearby, and Miles Lessingham who also works at Larksoken and who arrived late because he found the serial-killer’s - called The Whistler - last victim. He described to them everything, all the details of the murder, even those that the police had not divulged.
Almost 180 pages and we get to the main story: Hillary Robards is killed, and Adam found her. It has been made to look like the Whistler did it, but as fate wanted he’s killed himself and the police are sure he died before her. The obvious suspects are the people who were at that dinner at Martyr’s cottage and heard how the Whistler did it, but Rickards investigates everyone: there’s Neil Pascoe who lives in a caravan and tries to be an activist against Larksoken; Hillary was suing and she would have ruined him. Amy, with her little son Timmy, live with Neil. She’s very loyal to him, and is having a secret affair with Alex. There’s Ryan Blaney who lives in a cottage owned by Hillary. She wanted it back, but he had no other place to go; he had lost his wife and had now four children to care about.
The eldest, Theresa, saw something the night of the murder, but said nothing because she worried about giving her father an alibi, saying that she was home with him.
Other characters in the book, just to fill pages maybe, are Caroline and Jonathan. She’s Alex’s PA who to his surprise will not be following him in his new job, and Jonathan is supposed to be her reason for staying.
The only one who seems to have a strong alibi is Alex, because there are security measures that check when anyone enters or leaves Larksoken.
Miles was in love with Toby who killed himself, maybe because of Hillary. Amy had asked Alex to stop Hillary from suing Neil but she was resolute in doing it.
Caroline asks Jonathan to lie to the police for her, saying that they were together. She’s not doing great at pretending to love him, and everybody seems to think that he’s too naive or dumb to do anything about it, but he wants to know if she lied to him because if she lied about one thing maybe she lied about everything concerning them, so he tracks down her parents. He finds an address in the phone book and calls pretending to be Scottish to find out if that’s really Caroline’s parents’ house. Then, to be even more sure, he pays a visit and talks to the housekeeper. Caroline’s parents are wealthy and away on vacation, he has the proof that she lied so he goes to talk to her. It’s late but she’s going for a ride on her boat with Amy. He tells her that he knows that she lied but she doesn’t care, and to get rid of him she makes him believe that she and Amy are lovers. It turns out that Caroline was part of a terrorist cell that wanted to take over Larksoken, but she got scared and decided to run. All Amy did to help her was to deliver some postcards on a specific place on the beach. It was really annoying to listen to Caroline. She was dead sure because: a postcard had been found upside down (Theresa had found it) and two people looked for her at her parents’ house: both Jonathan. She never stopped to think of how could Jonathan be so sure that she had lied to him. She could not think of any other explanation than that she had been found out, and very stupidly thought that her bosses would relocate her with a new identity, but she caused her own death and Amy’s too.
Rickards holds a grudge against Adam for an unjust remark when he worked for him, and yet he keeps calling him to update him on his private life, like his wife coming back home and delivering a healthy daughter.
Theresa is brought to the hospital for an appendicitis and tells her father that the night of the murder she saw Mrs Dennison... and then we hear the conclusion. Meg knows that Alice lied to the police and confronts her about it. She never said a word to anyone because she thought they were friends. It turns out that Alice killed Hillary because she was blackmailing Alex into marrying her. Once, when they were children, Alex had stopped her from helping their dying father and he died. Alex knew that their father had been hurting her and let him die. Now she wanted to save him.
Alice then kills herself, and the case will never be closed because there are no proof against her or anyone else, but it is believed that the killer died, whether it was Alice, Caroline or Amy.
Adam knows that Caroline didn’t do it, that she had been investigated by MI5 because they asked him to check what Neil knew about it: nothing. He is very angry at her and burns all her stuff, angry that she was Caroline’s lover. In Adam’s words: “Pascoe, for all his liberal ideas, is as ready as the next man to believe that a woman who doesn’t persist in wanting to go to bed with him must be either frigid or a lesbian”.
Meg will never tell Alice’s real motive, she only says that Alice did it to stop Alex from marrying her. Alice had told Meg that she never wanted anyone to know the real reason, and that she would confess saying only what they would believe: “jealousy, hatred, the resentment of an ageing virgin for a woman who looked as she did, lived as she did. I’ll say that she wanted to marry him, take him from me after all I’ve done for him. They’ll see me as a neurotic, menopausal woman gone temporarily off her head. Unnatural affection. Suppressed sexuality. That’s how men talk about women like me. That’s the kind of motive that makes sense to a man like Rickards. I’ll give it to him”.
As she got back home she learned that the whistler was dead and worked to give Ryan an alibi.
It’s not clear though why Theresa said she had seen Meg.
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