1962, and on Christmas Day at precisely 6pm, a mysterious old man by the name of Silas Finn, calls on the new owners of an ancestral home in Devon and asks which they'd prefer to hear - a story or a song. Ten year-old Enys Quiller is adamant they must have a story, just as Cousin Beatrice instructed.

'You'll be sure to tell me dreckly, won't you?' says Beatrice. 'What the droll teller says?'

But the strange and macabre tale of Victorian poisoning and madness that follows, has far-reaching repercussions for Enys and her parents, and after the droll teller has finished, any notion of staying there, or even together, is shattered.