Hattie Jacobs, or “Batty Hattie” as her school friends called her, has returned to the village of Ennis Bray, and her late parents’ cottage, after a successful archaeology degree, and a failed career as a museum curator. Back in the village she notices some strange goings on at the house next door, but who is going to believe the girl the whole village knows is a scatterbrain and a liar? Hattie wants to show people that she’s changed, that she’s an intelligent, grown up woman with integrity and common sense. But news of her firing from the museum has already spread around the village. It is the worst thing that could possibly happen then when on her second night back home, she hears a terrible scream coming from the house next door. Who could have made this awful sound? And why, when she went up to the house to investigate, did its single occupant, Mr. Danvers, have a torn shirt, and blood on his hands?