The good ship Cape Farewell is steaming out to sea, with a passenger-list and crew fairly littered with the shifty, the twitchy, the peculiar, and the up-to-no-good. Arguably, the up-to-no-goodest is a strangler with a romantic streak: He likes to leave his ladies with a flower and a charming little song. The latest of the ladies is currently lying on a fogbound London dock, mute witness to the fact that Inspector Alleyn-long on the strangler's trail-has so far failed to catch his man. A wintertime sailing on a low-rent cargo ship is not Alleyn's idea of a terrific time, but he nevertheless boards the Cape at Portsmouth, determined that no one else is going to get strangled on his watch...