General Fentiman is found dead on the afternoon of November 11 in his armchair at the Bellona Club—just hours after the passing of his wealthy estranged sister. At ninety years old, his physician certifies death by natural causes. The important question, then, is not how he died, but when, as the answer determines the fate of an inheritance worth half a million pounds. If he died after his sister, her fortune stands to go to his grandsons, who are sorely in need of the funds. However, if his sister outlived him—even if only briefly—the money instead goes to his sister's companion, Ann Dorland. Fellow Bellona Club member and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey has to untangle a series of events to determine the general's precise time of death—and figure out if it was, in fact, a result of natural causes.