Charles Shorthouse is not the only person to receive the news of his brother Edwin's death with something less than grief. Although Edwin was an operatic bass of considerable artistry, he was also, it was generally agreed, a spiteful and thoroughly dislikable bully. Consequently, when he is found dead in the Oxford theatre where the cast of Die Meistersinger has been rehearsing, there is little sorrow.

But there are complications for almost everyone in the opera company, especially after the singer's apparent suicide proves to have been murder. Shorthouse had given them all reason to hate him, particularly the talented young conductor George Peacock, for whom this production of Wagner's opera is the big chance of his career.

Fortunately for all those who may be wrongfully suspected, the inimitable Gervase Fen is brought into the picture. Fen, Oxford Professor of Language and Literature and highly unconventional amateur sleuth, soon has matters in hand. Zany and unpredictable, he is able, by staging a macabre reconstruction of what seems to be a classic locked-room puzzle, to clear the innocent and uncover the guilty.