It's 1881, and Old College, Oxford plays host to three very different academics. Abercrombie Smith is a model of Victorian manhood, clean of limb and sound of mind. Monkhouse Lee is a delicate and unworldly student from Thailand. And occupying the rooms between them is the strange and exotic Edward Bellingham, whose unnatural researches into the secrets of ancient Egypt are the talk of the college. Can Bellingham’s experiments truly bring the breath of life to the horrifying bag of bones that is the mysterious Lot No 249