Oliver was a brutish child. The boy fathered the man and became a wife murderer. He had always had a strange hold over the narrator (an old school tie) and when he stole and killed narrator Munro's true love -- well really, old boy, he'd gone too far. Munro sets out to thwart Oliver's next marriage-cum-murder. His method is really gab, blab and hang the libel laws. Oliver is brought to book eventually and incredibly. As one character says to another here, ""That sort of thing should only happen in grand opera"". Hah!