A minor hitch arises before the marriage ceremony of Oxford University tutors Catherine Tregowyn and Harry Bascombe. The best man is missing. Perhaps Harry’s Uncle Jonathan was detained by car troubles somewhere in the Cornish hinterlands? No one suspects that he is lying dead at the bottom of a cliff where ocean waves have swept him into a cave. When he is at last discovered, the police suspect that he slipped off a cliffside hiking trail, but no one who knew Jon believes this version of events. Catherine and Harry suspect foul play. Harry’s cosmopolitan uncle, a dealer in Italian Renaissance art, was very wealthy indeed. Is it coincidence that the temperamental Italian fashion model, claiming to be his wife, appears at Jonathan’s holiday cottage with two children the day before he disappeared?