Nick Burnett is a part-time research student, studying the ways in which his local community was affected by Cromwell's Protectorate and his Puritan followers. He is particularly horrified when he hears the story of the brutal slaughter of local magistrate Sir William Newbury and his family, and follows the ongoing restoration work on Newbury Hall closely, in the hope of finding evidence of the outrage. Unfortunately, however, original sources of information from the period are tantalisingly rare.

After a while, he begins to wonder if his quest is becoming an obsession, affecting his reasoning, when he experiences strange sensations - dramatic changes in temperature, the feeling he is not alone, and the displacement of a particular ornament. Could he have become unhinged, albeit temporarily, or is he really being targeted by Lady Newbury, dead these 330 years? And if it is the latter, why does she insist on impeding his love life?

These are the questions that torment him secretly as he works towards a Master of Philosophy degree and tries to solve a 300-year-old riddle.