After the Puritan ban on Christmas festivities Restoration London is awash with excess between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, but the two men found in Westminster Hall had not died from a surfeit of gluttony, but from poison. The Lord Chancellor appoints Chaloner as his investigator into the killiings, believing them to be of scant importance to the affairs of state he deals with. But Chaloner reveals a stinking seam of corruption in the Palace of White Hall, where even the Queen is a victim to the greed of courtiers and functionaries. And the pickings are so rich that men are prepared to go to any lengths to save their own skins and their stolen fortunes.