Murder pays no respect to rank...or the neighborhood.And so it happened that young aristocrat Timothy Wycliffe was bludgeoned to death in his elegantly furnished flat in Belgravia by a person or persons unknown. Unknown, in fact, for 30 years.Then the dead man's friend Peter Proctor—once a young man on his way up in the diplomatic service, now a retired Member of Parliament—seeks an antidote to boredom by attempting to write his own memoirs. Unfortunately, they seem to be creating more problems than he anticipated, and not just of the writer's block variety. Peter keeps getting sidetracked by speculations on Timothy's death. The murder was allegedly accomplished by a beating from one of his boyfriends. But Peter can't accept so simple a solution, so he begins to probe the past. In so doing, he opens a fascinating window on British society during the 1950s and its changing—and unchanging—mores since.