Someone on the inside at the University of Oxford's Foreign Examination Syndicate is selling exam secrets. Nicholas Quinn, a member of the examination board, is in the right place to overhear something he shouldn't, and he is soon found dead at his cottage, poisoned with cyanide - but Nicholas was deaf. Then crossword compiler Philip Ogleby has his skull smashed in, and Morse suspects a connection.During his investigations, Morse is attracted to Monica Height. She works for the Examination Syndicate and may be mixed up in the corruption which led to Quinn's murder, and perhaps to Ogleby's as well.