The suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a wealthy patriarch is investigated by spy-turned-private-detective Charles Hayward, who is lured by his former lover to catch her grandfather's murderer before Scotland Yard exposes dark family secrets. On the sprawling estate, amidst a poisonous atmosphere of bitterness, resentment and jealousy in a truly crooked house, Hayward encounters three generations of the dynasty, including a theatre actress, the old man's widow 50 years his junior, and the family matriarch Lady Edith de Haviland.