A reporter is assigned a then-and-now piece on a 50-year old photospread of three society beauties. One of them, Lady Alice Munroe, now the widowed Grafin von Holzendorf, has agreed to be interviewed.
The plot follows Timothy Gedge, a socially inept yet intrusive teenage boy as he wanders around the dull seaside town of Dynmouth, spying on the town's residents. At first this behaviour is seen as merely annoying, even comical, until people begin to realise that his purpose may not be as innocent...
