A rich American art student is found dead at the bottom of a well in an ancient hilltop castle. The young woman, Claudia, had been working in the archives of an eminent French art historian, a crippled Resistance war hero, at his art-filled chateau. As Claudia's White House connections get the US Embassy and the FBI involved, Bruno traces the people and events that led to her fatal accident - or was it murder?Bruno learns that Claudia had been trying to buy the chateau and art collection of her tutor, even while her researches led her to suspect that some of his attributions may have been forged.

This takes Bruno down a trail that leads him from the ruins of Berlin in 1945, to France's colonial war in Algeria. The long arm of French history has reached out to find a new victim, but can Bruno identify the killer - and prove his case?