This book takes the killing in October 1946 of Dagmar Petrzywalski as the catalyst for a compelling and unique mediation on murder and fate. Dagmar, a gentle, eccentric spinster, was the embodiment of Austerity Britain's prodence and thrift. Her murderer Harold Hagger's litany of petty crimes, abandoned wives, sloughed-off identities and desertion was its opposite. The texture of their lives and the impression their experiences made on their characters fated their meeting on that bleak autumn morning - and determined the manner in which both would meet their death.