Reverend Paltoquet

What is the dreadful secret hiding behind the front door of an insignificant South London terraced house? Following a triple killing in 1896, a series of murders occur sporadically in the same house, culminating in the murder of the new occupant's girlfriend over a century later. But is there a connection, or are they simply coincidences?

The year is 1948. Reverend Bernard Paltoquet and his friend Dr Robbie MacTavish go on a tour of Europe and encounter a mystery in a Bergen forest. Why are the ghosts of two children haunting a fir tree? The following Christmas, that very tree turns up in the church hall and the ghosts of the children with it.

Towards the end of the 19th Century, two young mothers meet violent ends in a large South London house. Reverend Bernard Paltoquet and Dr Robbie MacTavish, together with their friend, clairvoyant Dorothy Plunkett, are drawn into these tragic events when young November Jones walks into Robbie’s surgery in the late autumn of 1962.

The tragic story of two sisters, one pretty, one plain, is key to both murders. The Rowan sisters are bound together by a secret they must keep, and their reclusive behavior plants suspicion in the minds of their neighbors, who regard them as "witches". Dispensing herbal remedies and keeping a mangy black cat add to their air of mystery and seem to bear out the rumors.

When a mysterious middle-aged woman moves in next door to St Stephen’s vicarage, she is immediately taken under the wing of Nancy Harper, the Reverend Bernard Paltoquet’s redoubtable housekeeper. As the relationship between the two women develops, however, "Mrs Aitch" begins to entertain suspicions that her new neighbor is not all she seems.