'I feel the net drawing in around me even closer and closer. Dufydd has appeared suddenly in Southmouth. He will never forgive. I remember his last words to me. 'Remember to come back, man, for if you do not, vengeance will follow.' What did he mean by that? Who's vengeance? The communists? Or had he guessed what I was going to do' It was a far cry from Communist China to the peaceful village on the South Downs, but to be a self-confessed murderer, keeping his agonized diary, it could buy no peace. But then who was the writer of the diary? 'A clergyman committed two murders -- one perhaps justified, one definitely not -- in China in 1947. That clergyman is now in England and involved with the village of Yateham. But there are three, one of them defrocked, who are connected in one way or another with the village. Which one is the killer? And which one murders one of the others? Or was the murderer possibly the young baronet, protecting the reputation of his betrothed? The novel is