Charming, elderly and erudite don Dr Davie is lecturing at one of the newer universities, and during his visit is given a demonstration of a series of spoken English lessons created for export to eager learners in Europe and the Far East; a service made possible by that new-fangled invention, the cassette recorder (the book was written in the late 1960’s).

Returning to his club in London, Davie discovers the body of a fellow member in the garden. The victim, an outwardly pleasant and respectable individual, turns out to be a philanderer and also to have had his finger in some very unsavory pies. Did he meet his end at the hands of a jealous husband? Was it the act of one of his underworld connections? Or is that harmless tape, with a script of banal, commonplace phrases, somehow involved?