The thirty-eighth mystery featuring Dr. Lancelot Priestley, a Golden Age armchair detective.

Cyprus Lodge is a reportedly haunted house in the English countryside that has remained unoccupied for many years. Ghost hunter Sir Philip Briningham is fascinated by the nineteenth-century building but his violent death adds to the rumours about the house. It draws the interest of Scotland Yard, and particularly Priestley who becomes convinced that the death of Briningham - and several others - were at the hands of a very human murderer.