The self-styled, self-important civic leader could not afford to have any embarrassing stories surfacing or his hopes and ambitions for the future would be dashed. Now his problem is how to silence the woman councillor who has discovered his offer to pay the gambling debt of a council officer who has done him a big favour. He plans and executes an impossible murder carried out in a pitch dark council chamber in front of dozens of people. But Edgar Hodgkiss, sharp and observant as ever, was there on the night and missed nothing.
Hodgkiss and his friend Pat Strong come to the aid of Pat's friend Mina, who had undergone a traumatic experience as a child in a rather run-down house which had been flooded during a heavy rain 20 years ago. But the old floods and the uprooting of an old tree have current consequences and the old sins cast long shadows.
Hodgkiss is peeved when Pat Strong takes a job cataloguing books at the Parliamentary Library. When Pat learns that those in charge of selling off unwanted stock are searching for a very valuable document hidden somewhere in the huge library the complications and the violence begin.