Dick Short, an odd-job man of no fixed abode, finds himself penniless in an isolated coastal village with only his whimsical charm and rakish humor to see him through. An innocent-looking job brings him face-to-face with the ravishing Sylvia Swaddling, an art historian, and the fresh corpse of her husband Sidney, a research chemist who apparently died by accident. All is not what it seems. Sylvia has a dark hypnotic power which has an intoxicating sexual effect on him. He struggles to resist, but is quickly drawn into her web of intrigue. The village is a debauched plethora of twisting streets and alleyways, housing a close-knit community of highly emotive eccentrics, each with their own guilty secret. Short’s instinct tells him to run, but he is forced to abandon his cavalier attitude to life and face up to his emotional inadequacies in order to solve a centuries-old supernatural mystery and unmask a killer.