After an evening at a pub sketching the faces of the people around her, art student Morag Merrilea wakes up the following morning in the hospital with her sketchbook missing and no memory of what happened. Thinking there might have been foul play (and hoping she's not a common alcoholic), Morag reports to Sergeant Hamish Macbeth that she has been drugged. Hamish doesn't make much of her complaint, however. She had been out drinking, after all, and he'd prefer not to be bothered with such an arrogant and tiresome woman. But when her lifeless body is discovered and her sketchbook is still nowhere to be found, Hamish is forced to investigate a crime that the only known witness — now dead — had forgotten.