Sir Manuel Camargue, yesterday one of the most celebrated musicians of his time, today floats in the lake near his sprawling English country house.

The consensus is “tragic accident.” Inspector Wexford, that most human and dogged of sleuths, knows foul play when he smells it. Particularly in the fair company of two suspects – one, the victim’s fiancée who is too young to be true, the other his daughter who may be no kin and even less kind.

In California and the South of France, they lead the Inspector on a trail of disappearance and death to a place where all the music stops.