Matthew Bartholomew accompanies a Michaelhouse party to rural Suffolk, where the scholar Unwin is to become priest of a parish newly granted to the college. The visitors arrive amid bitter disputes over land, boundaries and the abandoned remains of a village destroyed by plague.
When Unwin is murdered inside the church that should have become his home, local people blame a curse associated with the dead settlement. Bartholomew rejects the superstition and instead examines who benefits from the parish's property, discovering that earlier deaths and present rivalries form part of the same calculated design.