Superintendent Daniel Sheehan of the Cambridge Constabulary arrives at Robinson Crusoe’s Island, relieved that the arm is attached to a body. He organizes traffic control and orders that the undergraduates watching from the bridge be cleared away. Sarah Gordon, the woman who found the body, sits pale and sick, attended by a constable. Sheehan examines the crime scene, noting it is littered with footprints, discarded items, and Sarah’s abandoned art supplies.

Drake, head of forensics for the Cambridge Constabulary, informs Sheehan the murder weapon is missing, and they will likely need to drag the river. Sheehan examines the body: a young woman in a tracksuit, face beaten in, the hood tie wound around her neck, and deliberately covered with leaves. He sees the St. Stephen’s College insignia on her jacket and realizes the case will be a political nightmare.

At New Scotland Yard, Superintendent Malcolm Webberly briefs his Detective Inspectors—Hale, Stewart, MacPherson, and Thomas Lynley—about the case. He acknowledges the irony of requesting outside help after recently railing against such practices. His secretary, Dorothea Harriman, delivers a fax from Cambridge. Webberly explains that the Master of St. Stephen’s College and the University Vice-Chancellor requested Scotland Yard’s involvement due to the local police’s previous mishandling of a student suicide and because the victim is the daughter of a professor. Webberly’s own daughter, Miranda, is a student at St. Stephen’s and knew the victim.

The fax identifies the victim as Elena Weaver, 20 years old, killed between midnight and seven in the morning by beating and strangulation. Inspector Lynley volunteers to take the case.

The narrative shifts to Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers in the Information Room, who is distracted by worry over her mother’s dementia and the inadequacy of her caregiver, Mrs. Gustafson. She recalls a recent incident where her mother wandered away when Mrs. Gustafson left her alone. Barbara weighs placing her mother in Hawthorn Lodge, a residential home run by Florence Magentry. Inspector Lynley finds her and tells her about the case, offering to go ahead alone. Havers insists on accompanying him. When Lynley reveals the case is in Cambridge, his satisfaction is evident, and he admits he is a fool, “but only for love” (3).

Professor Anthony Weaver arrives home with his ex-wife, Glyn Weaver, who has come up from London. Both are numb with shock. Glyn observes the house, a symbol of Anthony’s successful second life. His current wife, Justine Weaver, greets them and offers them an elaborate tea, which Glyn refuses.

Glyn demands to see Elena’s body. Anthony refuses, describing the horrific injuries: one side of her face bashed in, bones showing, no nose. Glyn confronts Anthony about his broken promise that Elena would not run alone. Justine explains that Elena contacted her the previous night to cancel their morning run. Glyn furiously blames Justine for Elena’s death, accusing her of negligence because she has never had a child and cannot understand a mother’s vigilance. Glyn demands Elena’s room instead of the guest room. She accuses Anthony of not caring about Elena’s death, saying he can simply make another child with Justine. Anguished, Anthony flees the house in his car.

He drives to a village outside Cambridge, gets out, and watches a woman through her window. He whispers the name Tigresse before a passing car jolts him back to his senses.

Inspector Lynley arrives at a house in Bulstrode Gardens and is greeted by Lady Helen Clyde, who is staying with her sister. The house is chaotic, filled with evidence of three young children: four-year-old twins, Christian and Perdita, and an unnamed infant. Helen explains her sister, Penelope, is unwell after the birth, and her husband, Harry Rodger, is often absent, staying at his college. Lynley and Helen have a tense but intimate conversation, revealing their unresolved romantic history. Helen tells Lynley he should not have come but agrees to phone him at his college rooms if Harry returns home. Lynley confesses he volunteered for the case because it was in Cambridge.

After Lynley leaves, Helen reflects on the deterioration of her sister’s house and marriage. She goes upstairs to check on Penelope, who is in bed, weeping with pain from breastfeeding. Penelope reveals her husband has not been home, and they have not named the new baby. Penelope confronts Helen about Lynley, warning her that he will never give up pursuing her and that she should end their relationship. She launches into a bitter tirade about the filthiness of life and marriage, warning Helen not to be a fool.

Inspector Lynley meets with Terence Cuff, Master of St. Stephen’s College, in the Master’s Lodge. Cuff reiterates why Scotland Yard was called—an earlier policing controversy and jurisdictional complications—and says he believes Elena’s killer knew her and was likely from within the University rather than a random attacker from the city. He notes the night porter logged Elena leaving the college alone around 6:15 that morning.

Cuff details Elena’s academic and behavioral problems during her first year: missing scheduled supervisions with her academic advisors, skipping lectures, attending supervisions drunk, and staying out all night. A plan was implemented to help her that included regular contact with her father, keeping a pet mouse to develop responsibility, and pairing her with an undergraduate guardian named Gareth Randolph, president of DeaStu, the Deaf Students Union. Cuff reveals that Elena was deaf and that Elena’s father opposed her involvement with DeaStu because her parents had raised her to integrate as much as possible into the hearing world.

Cuff explains that Elena’s parents, especially her mother, had pushed her to learn to lip-read and speak audibly, forbidding her to sign at home. DeaStu represented a culture of Deaf pride that her parents rejected, leaving Elena caught between two worlds. When Lynley questions whether Elena’s problems at school might have embarrassed her father professionally—as he’d been recently short-listed for the prestigious Penford Chair of History—Cuff becomes evasive.

Lynley visits the Weaver home in Adams Road and finds the house perfectly decorated but sterile. He sits down with Justine and a visibly distraught Anthony. Elena’s mother is upstairs, sedated. Anthony recounts identifying Elena’s body by a unicorn necklace and a chip in her tooth. He confesses deep guilt over abandoning Elena when she was five, believing she struggled with feelings of abandonment her whole life. He describes his joy at reconnecting with her in Cambridge and watching her work on essays with Justine. When Lynley asks about professional embarrassment over Elena’s troubles, Anthony reacts with outrage.

When Justine wonders whether Elena could’ve had a falling out with Gareth, Anthony adds that Gareth boxes and that the engineering laboratory where Gareth works is very close to the murder scene. Justine explains that Elena called her the previous night on a Ceephone—a device consisting of “a computer, its monitor, a telephone, and a modem” (70) used to communicate with a deaf caller by phone—to cancel their morning run. In Anthony’s study, he demonstrates the Ceephone by calling his graduate student, Adam Jenn. The dog whines outside, but Anthony forbids Justine from letting him in. Justine says the call came shortly after eight and she assumed Elena’s knee was bothering her. Elena had said she would phone her father at the college, but Anthony says she never did. Justine admits she went running that morning without Elena but took a different route because she dislikes running along the river.

After Lynley leaves, Justine lets the dog inside against Anthony’s wishes. She reflects on her marriage and her parents’ disapproval of Anthony. Upstairs, Anthony seeks comfort from Justine, but she feels only anxiety and resentment. When he senses her resistance, he stops. Justine confronts him about where he went that afternoon. She reveals she phoned his college rooms the previous night after speaking to Elena, and he was not there, accusing him of lying to Lynley about being at the college and continuing an extramarital affair when he claimed it was over.

In Greenford, a London suburb, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers drives her mother to Hawthorn Lodge, a care facility for patients with dementia. Mrs. Havers is agitated, complaining of a smell of cabbage. A woman named Florence greets them warmly, but Mrs. Havers becomes increasingly distressed. Barbara and Florence struggle to get Mrs. Havers upstairs to her new room. When they begin unpacking, Barbara realizes she forgot to pack a picture of herself. Overwhelmed by her mother’s distress and her own guilt, Barbara makes an excuse, collects her mother and the suitcase, and leaves, abandoning the plan to place her in the home.

In Cambridge, Inspector Lynley crosses Chapel Court and enters the chapel, where the choir is rehearsing. After rehearsal, he greets Miranda Webberly, the superintendent’s daughter, who plays trumpet in the choir. They go to her rooms in New Court. Lynley sees a cage containing Elena’s mouse, Tibbit. Miranda reveals she wears earplugs to sleep and she heard nothing from Elena’s room on the morning of the murder.

Miranda says Elena was popular with men. She names Gareth Randolph, who visited frequently, and Adam Jenn, her father’s graduate student. She also mentions Elena’s father’s frequent visits to monitor her. Pressed by Lynley, Miranda reluctantly admits she witnessed Elena and Gareth having a heated argument in sign language on Sunday evening. After Gareth left angrily, Elena also went out at around 7:40 pm, and Miranda never heard her return that night. Miranda reveals that another man, Lennart Thorsson, one of Elena’s supervisors, also visited her. Elena had derisively nicknamed him Lenny the Lech. Miranda tells Lynley that she saw Thorsson in Elena’s rooms at night on two separate occasions, once in the third week of term and again the previous Thursday.

Lynley walks to his assigned rooms in Ivy Court. He learns from the porter that Police Superintendent Sheehan will meet him in the morning; there is no message from Lady Helen. He writes his report but finds himself thinking about Helen and his frustration with their stalled relationship. From his window overlooking the graveyard, Lynley sees a shadowy figure slip among the bicycles along the fence, enter a doorway in the court’s east range, and quickly exit before disappearing into the fog. In the brief moment as she passes beneath the light, he glimpses that the figure is a woman with dark hair.