Mrs. Malory has been friends with actor David Beaumont since their salad days. Less green today and pinched financially, David has to raise funds to save his lovely, much-mortgaged cottage situated directly across from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford. David is desperate enough to ask for help from his brother, the much hated Dean of Culminster Cathedral. The old Scrooge quickly shows his lack of Christian charity by refusing a loan. David's last hope is the sale of his family's large house - tantalizingly out of reach since it has been left to his old nanny for the remainder of her life. Only when she dies can it be sold. Quite fortuitously she does. To all appearances the nanny's death is an accident - until someone poisons the Dean. David is aghast...after all, he is the primary suspect. In his hour of need, he calls upon Mrs. Malory. Before long, she has her own list of suspicious characters: the Dean' s mousy wife, his frumpy librarian daughter, and his very nervous son. All of them may be hiding secrets...and all of them may have a motive to want the Dean dead.