Professor Maggie Eliot has returned to her position at Oxford after a sabbatical year and is finding it difficult to balance the demands of her job with being a newlywed. Then, before she has the time to see if she can adjust, the wife of her friend and colleague Stephen Draycott is found dead, the victim of a bathtub slip and fall. Kitty Draycott had recently left her husband and claimed to have a new boyfriend, whose identity no one seems to know. But even before that, Kitty had a reputation with men. A great many men. When the police decide Kitty's death was no accident, Maggie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation with no shortage of suspects, while her friends in the Church Ladies' Guild find they have quite a few reasons to gossip about the newest member of their circle.