Set in a luxurious Mayfair flat in 1929 London, the story centers on two Oxford university students, Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo. Driven by a belief in their intellectual superiority and inspired by Nietzschean philosophy, they murder their fellow student, Ronald Kentley, purely for the thrill of committing the "perfect crime." They conceal his body in a chest and, in a macabre twist, host a dinner party using the chest as a buffet table.