After a turbulent few years, war correspondent and journalist Alec Ballantine's long-awaited peace and quiet is abruptly interrupted. The local vicar, Father Joe Dent, pounds on the door of Alec's Battersea apartment, on a Sunday evening, claiming to have killed a man in his church.

Alec and his colleague, Philip Bing-Wallace, investigate and become entangled in an intriguing mystery, linked to the dazzling Baroness Freya Saumures. But Freya is not her real name ... Alec is told she is Charlotte, a young woman thought to have been killed by the Nazis in 1940.

Alec finds himself plunged into in a world of deceit, vengeance and recrimination. He falls in love with Charlotte, despite her mysterious past, her treacherous uncle, and the murder of her husband.