Spring Term 1935

Manchester, England

Dorothea Roberts, a curious-minded first-year English student at university, and her friends find themselves investigating a murder that happened at the local museum, twenty years previously.

A killer struck at the opening of an exhibition featuring the St Boniface Psalter, an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, said to be cursed. A renowned archaeology professor, Professor Beaumaris, was found dead in a locked cabinet containing the tome. The murderer was never apprehended and the initial suspects have lived under the stigma of guilt ever since. These include Dorothea’s favourite English lecturer, Professor Aldridge and Theodora Hadley-Brown, the mother of Dr Geraint Hadley-Brown – full time academic and part-time spy.

To investigate, the friends organise an Easter house party at Geraint’s isolated family home, Mickering Priory, where the psalter was once guarded by monks. All the suspects are invited. The weather deteriorates and the party is stranded by severe flooding.

Cut off from the world, the killer strikes again.

Does the St Boniface Psalter hold a vital clue to the murderer’s identity?

Dorothea and her friends must prevent the killer from destroying the Boniface Psalter which may contain evidence of past crimes.

So much history, so much death, can Dorothea break the curse?