The year is 1849 and Charles Watson is offered a job in Plymouth. Leaving his family and friends in Kent he makes his way, via London, to Devon by railway and mail coach.   His new landlady has one of her rooms burgled and something valuable is stolen. When one of her lodgers mysteriously disappears, local tongues begin to wag.   A local cholera outbreak kills twenty five people.   A body is discovered in a barn, and Charles'' landlady, al