Foolishly, the British and Irish governments have chosen the tactless and impatient Baroness Troutbeck to chair a conference on Anglo-Irish cultural sensitivities. She instantly press-gangs Robert Amiss, her young friend and reluctant accomplice, into becoming conference organizer. Not only are a truculent Orangeman, intransigent republicans, imitative loyalists, appeasing English and hypocritical Irish among the nightmarish participants whose arrival Amiss views with dread, but driving rain and security problems make things even worse. It is a conference to remember in more ways than one, for when a delegate plummets off the battlements, no one, not even the authorities, can decide whether it was by accident or design, and the warring factions accuse each other of murder.