When her parents die from fever, Lady Sarah Montgomery Baird Watson-Wentworth has to leave India, a land she was born and raised in, and travel to England for the first time. Finding it almost impossible to adjust to London society, Sarah flees to the county of Cheshire and the country estate of Grangeback that borders the village of Stickleback Hollow. A place filled with oddballs, eccentrics and more suspicious characters than you can shake a stick at, Sarah feels more at home in the sleepy little village than she ever did in the big city; however, even sleepy little villages have mysteries that must be solved.

With Lady Sarah in hospital, it should be a time to rest, but no matter where she finds herself, there are mysteries to be solved - and this time it is patients vanishing from the hospital around her. Mr Hunter is locked in his lodge and refusing to come out, even to visit Lady Sarah. But when Lady Sarah is the one to go missing, Constable Arwyn Evans must convince him to help him find her before it is too late.