A century old crime menaces the present in this spine-tingling tale of supernatural suspense. Antiques dealer Nell West is valuing the contents of her late husband Brad's childhood home. Stilter House, set in the remote Derbyshire Peaks, is said to stand on haunted ground. And once there was a much older property there - a house in which the notorious Isobel Acton committed a vicious crime. In Oxford, Nell's lover Michael Flint is contacted by an elderly aunt of Brad West's, who warns him that Nell and her small daughter Beth must not spend a night in Stilter House. "Because Esmond is still there," says the aunt. "And Beth is so very like Brad ..." Then, soon after Nell and Beth arrive at the isolated old house, Nell hears soft piano music, even though the music room is closed up, the piano locked and the key missing. And then she discovers that the mysterious music has been heard before. Nell and Michael begin to realise that the music is not just linked to Esmond, but is tangled with Isobel Acton's macabre fate more than a hundred years earlier. A fate whose consequences still menace the present.