Born to an unpleasant mother and a mostly absent father, Cordelia Featherstone is raised by a much loved governess. At the age of seventeen, Cordelia - dubbed Tonya by her father - against her mother's wishes, decides on a university education.
A mysterious woman appears at her home in Kent. Introducing herself as 'Aunt Julia', she presents Tonya with a bequest, a string of mysterious beads.
The following day, her mother's body is discovered, hanged from a tree in her own garden. There appear to be no clues as to the perpetrator but the police are convinced it wasn't suicide
Her father seems not so much disturbed by his wife's death, as by the advent of the mysterious Aunt Julia and her bequest.
With the permission of the police, Tonya moves to university at Castlewick in Northumberland where she meets, amongst others, an attractive professor of archaeology, a shy young man with an uncanny resemblance to her father, an apparent ghost and a loud Glaswegian and his timid wife.
At the end of her studies, she is offered the job of her dreams, and is swept of her feet by a clever man with a fascinating occupation. He is key to all future happenings, as people from her past begin to reappear and all becomes clear - mostly.