It was the children who, innocently, started the train of events that was to have such a devastating climax. Every day, in a newly opened primary school next door to the Marchington home, the pupils would create a minor uproar under the elder Miss Marchington's window and disrupt her customary afternoon nap. So her great-niece, the young painter, Avril Marchington, went over to the school to see if she could persuade the teachers to keep the children more quiet. It all seemed so simple....

As simple and uncomplicated as the fact that the same day, Avril's estranged sister and her husband and two children arrived back in the States after years abroad and came to stay in the tall brownstone on New York's East Side. Yet these two events were linked in a way that Avril could not have imagined in her wildest nightmare. Any more than she could imagine the real and crucial role played by her old enemy, Julian Demarest, young partner of her tyrannical late father, and, she believed, fellow-conspirator in her own unhappiness.

But if Avril was now haunted by the ghost of a child that had been taken from her, Julian had his own tragedies and fears to contend with. That a chain of terror linked the school, Avril, her family, and Julian together—and that a shattering culmination was rapidly approaching—was something none of them could ever have dreamed.