In the spring of 1817, I take a post as a secretary at the Sudbury School in Berkshire, a school for sons of the wealthiest merchants and bankers in England. However, as soon as I arrive, I discover that I've been hired for more than letter-writing skills.A series of disturbing pranks have kept the school in an uproar, and the headmaster expects me, to my dismay, to discover the identity of the prankster. The problems intensify when a groom of the school's stables turns up dead in a lock of the nearby canal.As I work to discover what happened, I become drawn into the secrets of Marianne Simmons, the actress who'd lived upstairs from me in my tiny lodgings in London. Marianne swears me to silence, which puts a new strain on my friendship with Grenville.Meanwhile the intrigue surrounding the murder becomes as murky as the waters of the canal itself and plunges me and everyone I care for into deadly danger.
