Washington, D.C., spring 1906. Actor Dade Wyatt, touring through Teddy Roosevelt's Washington with a prominent Shakespeare company, reluctantly resumes an old role of murder investigator when a fiery populist Congressman is found beaten to death after a very public insult to a senior conservative on the House floor. The accused is a man Wyatt has every reason to hate: his dead wife's father. When a mysterious lady persuades him to take the case, Wyatt enlists the help of his Creole friend Germain, pursuing the real killer through the corrupt and rapacious world of Gilded Age real estate development, the halls of Congress, and the surprising parallel universe of the Capital's cultured black community.