When Zorah Rostova asks London barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone to defend her against a charge of slander, he is astonished to find himself accepting. For without a shred of evidence, the countess has publicity insisted that the onetime ruler of her small German principality was murdered by his wife, the woman who was responsible for the prince's exile to Venice twenty years before. Private investigator William Monk and his friend Hester Latterly journey the country to the city of water in an attempt to verify the countess's claims, and though the two manage to establish that the prince was indeed murdered, as events unfold the likeliest suspect seems the countess herself.
