As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun. "You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens the dead woman's next-door neighbour. Death is always the next-door neighbour," said Morse sombrely. The murder of a young woman ... A cryptic "seventeenth-century" love poem ... And a photograph of a mystery grey-haired man ... It's more than enough to set Chief Inspector E Morse on the trail of a killer. And it's a trail that leads him to Lonsdale College, where the contest between Julian Storrs and Dr Denis Cornford for the coveted position of Master is hotting up. But then, Morse faces a greater, far more personal crisis ...