Patricia's life has fallen apart. Her son, Noah, is in a Russian prison, framed for a crime he didn't commit. Her husband has abandoned her, and mounting legal costs have left her broke. In desperate need of funds to pursue Noah's appeal, she takes a job supervising the renovation of Gaunt House, an Elizabethan ruin on the North York Moors. When a corpse and a diary are discovered in the rubble, she begins to investigate the house's tragic history—and finds that the past, and the dead, are closer than they seem.