Caffery Bone, the literary editor of a London periodical, receives an invitation to stay at the mansion of the publication’s proprietor. It doesn’t bode well. Bone is painfully aware that Lord Ower has a track record of hosting those he wants to fire. He casts his mind back to three previous employees who had their fates sealed and their reputations tarnished after being lured to The Towers for a Last Supper: the reviewer who was plied with huge quantities of booze; the editor who was coerced into sacrificing her principles; and the writer, and man of the cloth, who was framed as a reader of racy literature. Arriving at the media mogul’s grand home and anticipating the “dread meal,” Bone wonders if this visit will further his career or end it.