Rosy Gilchrist and her hesitant sidekicks, Felix Smythe and Professor Cedric Dillworthy, are visiting Cambridge: Rosy to attend a Newnham reunion, and Felix and Cedric to attend preparations for the unveiling of a statue of the latter's old tutor. But plans for the statue are far from set in stone, and the meddling Gloria Biggs-Boothby is determined to see it created by another artist. It's inconvenient, then, when he turns up dead.

As Rosy and her associates become increasingly embroiled in events, they face a number of teasing questions: is the deaf and frail Emeritus Prof. Aldous Phipps quite as benign as he seems? Is the Bursar a secret misogynist with a rooted aversion to large women (e.g. to Gloria)? And who is the unwitting husband that Dr John Smithers is so busy cuckolding?