George Smiley goes to the aid of his former colleague, Ailsa Brimley after she receives a letter from a woman predicting her own murder and naming her husband as the killer. After the woman is found dead, they uncover secret societies, sexual abuse, and a mysterious boy.

Maud is convinced something horrible happened to her best friend, Elizabeth, but in her search discovers it may be entwined with another disappearance from her childhood. The answers seem within her grasp, but the onset of dementia keeps pulling them through her fingers.