David Butler, a high-ranking diplomat living in Brussels, receives a call from the daughter of the deceased French artist André Lefevre, whom Butler knew in Ireland and whose work is about to have a major exhibition in Paris. An article by French journalist Eduard Faure has been published in Images de Paris implying that Lefevre seduced and was responsible for the drowning death of Delia Hartney, a Knockbui teen who posed for some of Lefevre’s most famous portraits—and that an unnamed boy who bears a resemblance to the young David may have been his accomplice. Lefevre’s daughter wants assurance that her father—who died in a mysterious fire shortly after the girl’s drowning—was not involved. David seeks out those who remember that far-off summer and begins to uncover the truth of what happened.