In a quiet town perched along the French coast, Maurice Lawes, Wilfrid Hyde-White an English antiques dealer, becomes a witness to a night-time murder of a gendarme. The killer spots Lawes at his window and realizes he has been seen, a fact that tensions the already fragile mood of the seaside community. The next evening, the town is shaken again when Janice Lawes, Petula Clark Lawes, discovers that her father has been murdered, deepening the sense that the crime is personal as well as violent.
An official investigation is launched by the local police, joined by private insurance investigator Dermot Kinross, Dan O'Herlihy. The initial theory—that Lawes was killed to prevent his identification—begins to falter as a web of possible motives surfaces. The case widens beyond a single culprit and brings a number of people connected to Lawes under scrutiny, each with their own reasons to value or conceal what he owned or knew.
Toby Lawes, Jack Watling Lawes, is revealed to have been embezzling funds from his father to pay off a blackmailing ex-mistress. Toby’s fiancée, Eve, Phyllis Kirk, lives opposite the murder scene and is found in possession of bloodstained clothing she cannot fully explain, placing her under intense inquiry. Eve’s ex-husband, Ned Atwood, William Franklyn, emerges with a surprising interest in a rare snuffbox from Lawes’ personal collection, the very item that later goes missing and could connect him to the break-in or the murder itself.
As Kinross follows the threads, Eve’s possible involvement comes under particular scrutiny: could she have acted as an accomplice to Toby or Ned, or did she become entangled in events she didn’t fully understand? The investigation methodically weighs alibis, financial motives, and the strange missing snuffbox, all while the survivors contend with grief and fear in a tight-knit coastal town.
Kinross works to untangle the actual sequence of events, sifting through lies and partial truths to piece together a coherent explanation. The solution rests on separating genuine motives from misdirection, distinguishing the casual connections from the decisive links, and identifying who stood to gain most from Lawes’ death. In the end, the private investigator aims to deliver a clear, unambiguous resolution that honors the victims and reveals the culprit behind the double murder.
