Scotland Yard Superintendent Perry Trethowan is enjoying a vacation evening at a cosy Yorkshire pub when an old woman shows him an original, unpublished Bronte manuscript. Trethowan agrees to engage in a little literary detective work, but he doesn’t realise that for a criminal the manuscript is motive for theft, torture - and murder.
The third novel in Annie Murray's "Birmingham" series. While Genie's father is away fighting in World War II, her mother has a ruinous affair which leaves her pregnant; Genie's little brother leaves, never to return; while Genie herself meets a man who then disappears to war.