Who would kill a priest?

A Benedictine monk is found dead in a recently discovered priest-hole in a country house in Northamptonshire which, before the reformation, was an Augustinian Priory.

Chief Inspector Hood is initially baffled. The monk's injuries plainly show he was battered to death. But why and by whom? Was his death connected with the search for the Powdrell chalice associated with the family that lived in the house during the reign of Mary Tudor? Or was there some other motive?

Hood must work his way through several suspects, investigating their past lives, as he discerns truth from legend. Could the killer be the American Jesuit staying as a guest at the house, in the midst of a crisis of faith? Or was the killer, perhaps, someone from the monk's own past? Hood's investigation reveals that while the past is another country you cannot really break away from it. It has always been there first and muddied the trail of truth with its own footprints.