Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley receives a desperate plea for help from his friend from Eton: at the privileged private school where he teaches, a thirteen-year-old student has disappeared. Lynley and his partner Barbara Havers begin searching for the child, but soon they have to switch to hunting for a murderer, because the boy’s body, naked and bearing signs of torture, is found near a cemetery. Lynley and Havers begin to suspect that something terrible is happening behind the school’s walls.