The life of scholarly contemplation enjoyed by the Fellows of Sheepshanks College, Cambridge, is shattered when the Pryevian Librarian collapses and dies at High Table owing to a slug of arsenic in his port, and the recently discovered holograph copy of Shakespeare's earliest poem, "Cupid and Psyche," is found to be missing from the college library. John Saltmarsh, a Sheepshank's Fellow and closet writer of detective novels, sets out to solve these conundrums. The waters are further muddied by a rapist who stalks the streets of Cambridge in an academic gown.