"I'm so frightened, because I think one of them is going to kill her."

When Everett Carr overhears these words, he cannot help but investigate their source. Josephine Kettering is a frightened young woman. She fears that someone is plotting to murder her mother, the former actress Rowena Steele, and that the attempt will be made at Marsden Grange, the family's country house off the Norfolk coast. Carr, haunted by demons of his own and a growing sense of guilt about his own wife's death, offers to investigate further.

It soon becomes apparent that more than one person wishes Rowena dead and that Josephine's fears are well-founded. When Rowena is found poisoned by a lethal injection of morphine, however, there seems to be only one possible culprit - Daphne Clements, a young nurse with whom Rowena's husband has fallen in love. The evidence against Daphne is compelling: she is found beside the corpse, only her fingerprints are on the syringe that was used to inject the poison, and most damning of all, she confesses to the crime.

And yet, Everett Carr is not convinced.

With Daphne Clements living in the shadow of the noose, Carr faces a race against time to prove her innocence and expose a cruel and cunning killer...