Neil Hammond is by profession a design engineer, and by his own admission a bit of a square, and destined to be one of life's failures. Becoming a victim of the economic recession he very reluctantly accepts a temporary cash-in-hand job of looking after a friend's detective agency for a week while the proprietor, a friend of his from school-days is away on a case. The work seems to consist in the main of such exciting cases as looking for lost cats or watching erring husbands, but matters take an unexpected twist when he rescues a young woman from a car that has been washed away in flood waters. 'Danny' as she prefers to be known, is a glamorous and a highly successful business woman who insists on retaining his services in solving a murder that common sense says never happened. Knowing nothing whatever about being a detective, he is swept along by the whirlwind attitude to life of his client as he tries to prove that the whole business is nothing but  a wild goose chase. And then there is another murder, and matters suddenly become a race to prevent a third and fourth.

When Martin Scanforth, a successful and recently widowed businessman visits an old Victorian mansion left to him by an uncle he has had no contact with since childhood, with view to disposing of the place, he soon discovers that matters are nothing like as clear cut as he imagines. Set in the countryside outside the small country-town of Wellworthy he discovers that there is an aura of mystery surrounding the death of his uncle which unsettles him. The house is being cared for by a frosty-faced sharp tongued housekeeper who was devoted to his uncle, and the mystery seems to envelop her as well. The more he probes in an effort to unravel the mystery of ‘Springwater House’ the more sinister it appears and it becomes clear that death is stalking the pair of them. But who is the killer, and what is the mystery that surrounds the old house?