1852. Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case yet. Whilst painting the magnificent Sankey Viaduct, a landscape artist witnesses the body of a man plummeting from a speeding train into the murky canal below. After being dragged from the water by would-be rescuers, it is discovered that the victim had been stabbed through the heart before being thrown from the carriage. With no witnesses coming forward and no papers by which to identify the body, the investigation is hampered from the start. Since the man's face was badly injured by driftwood in the canal, they do not even know what he looked like.<BR>With press appeals and interviews bringing forward no new information, Colbeck wonders if an international approach might be needed: having an eye for fashion, he's noticed that the dead man's clothes have a Continental cut. Under pressure from the irascible Superintendent Tallis to solve the case by whatever means necessary, Colbeck and Leeming go to France, where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.<BR>But in a new country, the detectives face new problems. Anti-British feeling is rife and Colbeck and Leeming must put their own lives in danger to pick up the murderer's trail. In this, the most testing and perplexing case of his career so far, Robert Colbeck begins to suspect he might have finally met his match.