James ‘Jimmy’ Crocker – only son of a jobbing actor, former journalist, and now penitent playboy – returns to his native United States under an assumed name, after five years cutting a swathe through London Society on his rich stepmother’s money.

But far from picking up the threads of his peaceable pre-wealth life, instead Jimmy rapidly becomes enmeshed in plots and schemes of espionage and kidnapping. Added to which, he falls in love with a beautiful red-headed girl, whom he has mortally offended in the past – though he can’t quite remember how. And all of this while impersonating… himself!

The great financier Sir Reuben Levy disappears from his Park Lane home, on a November night, apparently without a stitch of clothing, or even his spectacles.

On the same night, in a suburban bathroom in Battersea, an unknown body bearing a superficial resemblance to Sir Reuben is discovered, reclining in the bath tub, unseasonably dressed in nothing but a pair of pince-nez.

Wimsey is asked to look into the case of the Battersea body, and joins forces with his friend Inspector Charles Parker of Scotland Yard, who is charged with investigating the Levy disappearance. But are the two case connected by more than the friendship of the two detectives? Lord Peter gradually uncovers an old resentment, leading to a gruesome crime…