1913.  The clouds of war are gathering.  The world’s great empires vie for supremacy.  Europe is in turmoil, a powder keg awaiting a spark. A body is discovered on the shore below Beachy Head, just a mile from Sherlock Holmes’s retirement cottage.  The local police are satisfied that it’s a suicide.  The victim, a young man, recently suffered a disappointment in love, and Beachy Head is notorious as a place where the desperate and depressed leap to their deaths. Holmes, however, suspects murder.  As he and Watson investigate, they uncover a conspiracy with shocking ramifications.  There are some men, it seems, who not only actively welcome the idea of a world war but are seeking divine aid to make war a reality.