Mr Neville, a young and conceited artist, is hired by Mrs Virginia Herbert Janet Suzman to produce a series of twelve landscape drawings of her country house, its outbuildings and gardens, as a gift for her cold and neglectful husband who is away on business. The arrangement comes with a troubling stipulation: Mrs Herbert agrees to fulfill Mr Neville's sexual demands, creating a tense power dynamic that threads through his stay. The project unfolds with each encounter—marked by reluctance on Mrs Herbert’s side and aggressive persistence on his—that gradually reveals the complexity and discomfort of their relationship.
During his stay, Mr Neville becomes disliked by several of the estate’s inhabitants and visitors, especially by Mrs Herbert's German son-in-law, Mr Talmann Hugh Fraser. The growing unease around him intensifies as his presence stirs whispers and scrutiny among the locals, casting a shadow over the work he has been commissioned to complete. Despite the mounting tension, the sexual encounters continue, underscoring a disturbing power imbalance at the heart of the contract.
Wearied by Neville’s excessive appetite and the strain it places on her life at the estate, Mrs Herbert eventually tries to terminate the contract before the twelve drawings are finished. Neville refuses to end the arrangement, and the encounters persist, with the disturbing implication that consent is unreliable and the boundaries between business and coercion have blurred beyond repair.
Then Mrs Talmann Anne-Louise Lambert, the married but childless daughter of Mrs Herbert, frustrated by her husband’s lack of sexual interest, blackmails Neville into a second, more expansive contract—one that asks him to comply with her sexual demands in hopes of conceiving a child. The scheme weaves a darker web around the artist, intertwining coercion, desire, and manipulation as the estate’s inner circle closes in around Neville.
Mr Herbert does not return when expected, and his dead body is eventually discovered in the moat. Neville completes his drawings and leaves, but returns for an unlucky thirteenth drawing, during which Mrs Herbert propositions him and they make love. She also reveals that her daughter’s plan to conceive a child by Neville has been successful, adding a grim note to the already troubled narrative.
That evening, as Neville appears to be finishing the final sketch, a masked man—clearly Mr Talmann in disguise—is joined by the estate manager and Mrs Herbert's former fiancé, Mr Noyes, along with their neighbor Mr Seymour and the Poulenc twins, eccentric local landowners. The party confronts Neville, accusing him of the murder of Mr Herbert, arguing that the drawings hint at more than one illicit act and implicate more than one person. They also allege the sexual violation of Mrs Herbert, evidenced by the afternoon encounter. Neville realizes, far too late, that he has been ensnared by Mrs Herbert. Despite his protests, the group blinds him and beats him to death, ultimately casting his body into the moat at the very spot where Mr Herbert’s corpse had been found.
