On the last nights of April 1736, five travellers passed the night at an inn in the remote provincial town of C———— in the South West of England. The innkeeper, Puddicombe, said that they had presented themselves as an uncle and a nephew, travelling with two manservant’s, and with a maid whom the gentlemen intended to deliver into the service of a neighbouring rich relation. Townspeople clearly recalled the younger gentleman’s servant Dick, a deaf mute, when soon after he was found hanged by his own hand in Cleave Wood with a posy of violets stuffed in his mouth. His fellow travellers had disappeared from the Biddeford Road and an inquiry now lies in the hands of a tenacious lawyer called Ayscough who begins taking depositions from every possible witness. There is speculation that that the maid might perhaps have been a lady of breeding in disguise upon an amorous adventure. Some describe a curious bond between Dick and his masters. A chest full of strange-looking charts and numbers has been spied in the young gentleman’s room. Whispers of lunacy and wickedness are about. None can say what tragedy has occurred.