Three bodies, two male and one female, are discovered in a disused nunnery in Ilfracombe. They appear to have nothing in common with each other except being left together on the cold stone floor. The victims were murdered elsewhere, then brought to the nunnery, as determined by their bloodless corpses. It falls to Detective Inspector Alan Dymond and his team to solve this baffling mystery. As they delve deeper into the case it becomes clear that the deaths have something to do with what happened at the nunnery in the distant past, when it functioned as a workhouse. As the pieces come together a terrible truth is revealed that sends a shiver of revulsion through the whole north Devon community.