It is 1918, and London is gathering in its dead. For undertaker Henry Speake, laying to rest the bodies of those sent home from the Front has become a familiar duty. But what he is seeing now, as influenza claims its victims, is something different.
Milly Theale is a young, beautiful and fabulously wealthy American. When she arrives in London and meets the equally beautiful but impoverished Kate Croy, they form an intimate friendship. But nothing is as it seems; materialism, romance, self-delusion and ultimately fatal illness insidiously contaminate ...