April 1967. As spring blooms, the deadth of artist Simon Hallward in a horrendous house-fire leaves Oxford City Police baffled as to the cause of the blaze. When a young housewife dies, seemingly of the same mysterious "Tummy Bug" that has seen half of Chief Superintendent Bright's troop go on Sick Leave, DC Endeavour Morse's investigation leads him to an inner-city supermarket, Richardson's, owned by a whealthy family of the same name, descended from a line of Quakers.