A group of children play. Not far away, in the ditch on the other side of the farmyard, the body of a young woman.

The nearby village hides as many secrets as the community at the farm, a disparate group of people looking for an alternative to their previous torturous lives. Their leader, idealistic and benevolent, espouses love and kindness, and somebody's not following his dictate.

The second death, an old woman, seems unrelated to the first, but is it? Is it part of the tangled web that connects the farm to the village?

The village, Detective Inspector Tremayne, and Sergeant Clare Yarwood find out soon enough, is anything but charming and picturesque. It's a hotbed of intrigue and wrongdoing, and what of the farm and those who live there. None of them can be ruled out, not yet.