A rule bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
Alice Turner sends for Holmes when her lifelong friend farmer William McCarthy is killed and police suspicion falls on his son, James. James McCarthy admits quarrelling with his father, but he will not explain what their argument was about.