When Meg Jeacock let out the furnished cottage next to her house she did not care that her new tenant had certain rather sinister characteristics - he'd paid three months' rent in advance. But Meg's husband Marcus sensed he was a crook. And when the stranger shows an inexplicable interest in Shandon Priory, the big house nearby, whose elderly owner has recently died, it becomes clear that there is trouble brewing - which, when it comes, takes the form of double murder . . .