In Kate's brother Larry's law office, says her niece Leighton, something odd is going on: Charlotte Lucas, a word processor in-putter, has vanished. In addition, the legatee of one of the firm's clients has also disappeared. The former is easily found, but the latter, a woman named Winifred Ashby, who is somehow related to the famous, now-dead English author Charlotte Stanton, is more elusive. The reclusive Winifred had been serving as "hired man" on a New England farm until she went to England in connection with a will, a trip she neither completed nor returned from. Why has no one heard from Winifred? Is she, as Kate feels "in my bones" dead?