The Great War is over, but battlefield Nurse Bess Crawford has been assigned to the Welsh patients, and their palpable sense of despair over returning home worries her. Contacted by their equally concerned officer, Captain Williams, Bess travels to a bleak coal mining village in Wales, but she is too late to find him. Following A Casualty of War, Bess's 10th adventure ensues as she traces Williams to an isolated, storm-battered peninsula, where she is stranded among strangers who are suspicious of outsiders. She quickly discovers these villagers are hiding something, and that there is a murderer here who is driven to kill again and again. No one in England knows Bess is here, and as Simon Brandon searches for her, he is unaware of his danger.