When Kate Mitchell was offered the job of part-time secretary at Tor-Fret, a lonely old house on the Northumberland fells, she had no idea that the household was composed only of men.

Her employer, Maurice Rossiter, an embittered victim of polio, was subject to alternative fits of temper and depression. Even so, Kate found it difficult to understand his peculiar hatred of his elder brother Logan, on whose charity Maurice was obliged to depend. But when she accidentally stumbled upon Maurice with Logan's fiancée , she became aware of some of the secrets of Tor-Fret, and realised she was getting too deeply involved with Logan Rossiter and the other inhabitants of the mysterious household.