As the tiny River Gudgeon meanders through the golf links at Paston Oatvile, it is spanned by a huge railway viaduct. When Mordaunt Reeves and a group of friends playing a round discover the battered body of a man, clearly fallen from the viaduct, Reeves - a man a little too fond of reminding everyone that he was in Military Intelligence during the war - suspects that the police are not taking the death seriously, and persuades his friends to help him to investigate. Soon, theories of the crime begin to emerge...