At the outset of World War II, Byron Gates, a self-absorbed poet, moves out of London together with his young daughter and stepdaughter to avoid the anticipated bombing. His wife, an actress, is in the States. His acquaintance, Virginia Woolf, has found him a little cottage in the village of Rodmell where she and her husband, Leonard, are living. Coincidentally, newlyweds Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are setting up their first home in the Old Vicarage. Gates is anxious to curry favor with the 'Woolves' and their set. His children put on a pageant for the neighbors based on the beheading of King Charles I, and then Gates is found dead as if executed for treason. Verity and Lord Edward investigate this gruesome murder.