It is March 1938 and a print worker petitions Holmes about the disappearance of a fellow worker at the Daily Mail newspaper.
Holmes investigates and interviews the newspaper’s proprietor, Viscount Rothermere, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to London.
Diplomatic immunity and the weakness of the British government prevent any further action being taken in 1938, and the mystery is only finally solved in the ruins of Vienna in the bitter winter of 1945/6.