Colin Pinnock becomes a junior minister in the Prime Minister's government and begins to receive threatening letters along with his congratulatory notes; he is thrown into an investigation into his past and a search for his tormentor.

A celebrity scholar in a small village tears her nephews from their immediate family and raises them in an atmosphere of cruelty. As old Lydia Perceval plans to destroy yet another group of impressionable young children's love for their parents, the list of those who would have her die grows longer.