When Thomasina stops hearing from her old school friend Anna, she worries because Anna has no family and no other friends, and wouldn't stop writing unless something were wrong. While her cousin Peter rants at her for doing anything at all, Thomasina stands up to him and reports to the police, then hires Miss Silver to investigate Anna's last position at a partially-bombed-out country manor house. Miss Silver finds a would-be artistic community surrounding the master of the house, Peverell Craddock, a bully of a man who has his wealthy wife and her children firmly under his thumb. Still not satisfied, Thomasina goes to the community herself, followed quickly by an enraged Peter (how dare a woman do something he told her not to??). Soon, though, the situation spirals out of hand; someone ends up dead, and it's up to Miss Silver to keep everyone else safe.