I.I. Magdalen's Henning Forsell takes up the case of the nineteen-year-old "Emma H., well-born, a great beauty, and "apparently" a collaborator, murdered or executed in Belgium in 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War. Three men carried out the "execution": an exiled Hungarian Stalinist who believes in a scientific future; a conservative Catholic intellectual, and a self-made entrepreneur-politician. All three were in the "maquis, though for different reasons; all three fell for Emma, also for different reasons. A fourth, a melancholy, failed Polish pianist, seduced by Emma, was somehow also as involved in her death as in her life. Once again Henning faces intractable problems that extend far beyond crime, particularly: the nature of collaboration and defeat, personal and public. Emma herself--exquisite, very young, very rich, very talented, impassive yet passionate, is an unforgettable girl-woman whose essential mystery Henning seeks to solve.