Ben Seaton is the new rector of Wychcombe Magna and is slowly gaining acceptance with the locals. His wife Diana feels decidedly out of place and even rather threatened as a strange woman, Jessy, keeps walking into the house without any invitation and the church bells suddenly ring at odd times. When a statue is vandalized and a placard depicting a swastika is found in the graveyard Diana's uneasiness escalates. Then the unthinkable happens - there is a murder at the rectory. Skeletons surface from the village's recent past - the death of a young girl, the involvement of a local man in a bullion robbery - and it becomes apparent that not everyone in the village is who they say they are. And then a second person is attacked...