A woman, later identified as Joan Simpson, argues with an unseen man; she wants to marry him, but he moves to attack. Her remains are later found dismembered and incinerated, along with a knife and a hacksaw, in a small furnace in Saltdean, near Brighton. The discovery sets off a tense investigation by two local detectives, who soon realize the case is as puzzling as it is grim.
The body cannot be identified at first, and the police lean toward a name that has surfaced through a clue: a suitcase with the initials JS at the scene leads them to think the victim could be Jean Sherman. This initial lead pushes the inquiry outward, as the team follows a trail that starts in Brighton, threads through Lewes, and even extends to Greenwich, as they methodically develop and chase down each possible line of inquiry. The search is careful and deliberate, driven by a need to separate fact from guesswork while keeping the case on a steady course.
DI Fellows goes to Jean Sherman's house and finds that she is still alive, a startling turn that shifts the direction of the investigation. He uses his encounter to extract a name and a handwriting sample, both of which align with the evidence collected at the victim’s residence, providing a crucial link between the living woman and the dead one. The scene is punctuated by tense exchanges and calculated moves as the detective works to confirm his hunch with tangible proof, all while the clock ticks on the case.
Flashbacks in her story deliberately keep the viewer in the dark about the identity of the man named Campbell, a device that heightens the mystery and underscores the complexity of the truth the detectives are seeking. Miss Sherman herself reveals a one-night stand with the man described as Campbell, a detail that adds another layer to the web the investigators must untangle.
The team eventually tracks down and arrests a suspect described by several witnesses as the man who occupied the house, but the man claims he was merely a door-to-door salesman who was with the victim and denies any involvement in the murder. His account checks out on the surface, and the detectives are left to reassemble the fragments of testimony and circumstance to determine what truly happened.
After the dead woman is positively identified, the veteran inspector must break the devastating news to her parents, then grapples with a bold, almost audacious idea about another suspect. The plan is put into action through a standard procedure that is applied in an unorthodox fashion, and the move pays off in a way that forces the truth into the open. The suspect in question, Ray Tenby, admits knowledge of the death but maintains that it was an accident, a claim that initially resists refutation until the detectives uncover a crucial lie: Tenby had not bought the item he claimed to have bought on a Monday bank holiday, a detail that undoes his alibi and closes the circle on the case.
