Jane (nee Hamish) and Dagobert Brown planned a long, lazy fortnight in the picturesque old Cornish village of Gwink. At least, that was the idea—but Jane had her doubts about it from the very start. She knew her Dagobert.

Sure enough, within a few hours of their arrival at Gwink's quaint old 'Plume of Feathers', the young man with the moustache, the limp and the two Harlequin Great Danes, whom they had noticed on the train down from London, was found dead. The inquest verdict was 'Suicide' but Dagobert was convinced that Patrick Blythe had been murdered.