Summer 1206. Before it was renamed, Bury St Edmunds was known as Bedricksworth after the ancient family who lived there. Now the last surviving member of the Bedrick clan, Arnulf, wants an heir to carry on the family name. Marrying for a fifth time, this is his last chance to achieve it. But Arnulf has a secret. Jump forward seven hundred years to New Year's Day 1903. The antiquarian and celebrated writer of ghost stories, M. R. James, is excavating the graves of five medieval abbots of Bury. But in one of the graves he discovers something that shouldn't be there. How are the two events connected? What is the secret found buried in the abbot's grave? Over it all hovers the ghost of Brother Walter who drives the investigation on to solve not only a seven hundred year old murder mystery but also another in the twentieth century in the way only Walter can.