In a valley in Northumberland, a shocking discovery shatters the peace in a quiet farming community. The owners of a big country house have employed a house-sitter, a young ecologist, to look after the place while they're visiting family in Australia. Then Percy, a retired farm labourer who lives with his divorced daughter in a development on the farmland, finds Patrick, the house-sitter, dead by the side of the lane on the way into the valley. Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, with her detectives Holly and Joe. When Vera looks round the attic of the big house - where Patrick has a flat - she finds the body of a second man. He's middle-aged, grey. What could the two victims have in common? Why were they killed on the same day, but their bodies found in separate locations?