In the summer of 1924, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is off on a summer holiday by the sea with her step daughter Belinda, Belinda's chum Deva, and Daisy's husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. Daisy is anticipating a relaxing, non-dramatic holiday. But Daisy doesn't have that kind of luck. It seems that a low-rent Don Juan has been busily seducing the local woman folk and, in a town this small, no secret is kept for long. As is amply illustrated when the Fletcher's simple picnic is interrupted by the discovery of a broken body at the foot of the cliff - that of the philandering local innkeeper of bad memory.