When two climbers die mysteriously on The Old Man of Scamadale—a stack off the Scottish coast—the police, who know nothing of climbing techniques, would accept the deaths as accidents. It’s Clive and his climbing friends who convince them, from their own knowledge of the stack, that both men were murdered—and in doing so they put themselves under strong suspicion, for they alone appear to have the expertise needed to perform the killings. An ironical situation, but amateur sleuth Miss Pink handles it with her usual subtle detection.