It is 1936 and Pompey Casmilus is living in London with her beloved Aunt She is bothered by the menace of German militarism, bothered too by the humbug which confronts it, and bothered most of all by her hopeless love affair with Freddy Its ending plunges Pompey into despair and, in Schloss Tilsen on the north German border where she goes to recuperate, she falls in with a strange band of conspirators