A family is torn apart when their eldest son is hanged for the murder of a young girl.

Paul Temple is called in to help Scotland Yard track down a serial killer who has murdered several wealthy women.

The woman here is Sylvia Russell: power mad with set goals. In order to achieve those goals she is sadistically devoted to her son and daughter, able to possess and direct them. She subtly ruins her daughter's marriage by corrupting a servant girl and, then, uses her to compromise her son-in-law; slowly breaks her bumbling, unambitious husband's confidence...