Plot
Robert Blair, a solicitor living in the country town of Milford, is called on to defend Marion Sharpe and her mother, who are accused of kidnapping and beating a fifteen-year-old war orphan named Betty Kane. The novel opens with the Sharpes about to be interviewed by local police. Marion has telephoned Blair, who agrees to come out to The Franchise, their isolated home on the edge of town, during the questioning.
Betty's account is that during the Easter holidays she went to stay with her aunt and uncle, the Tilsits, near Larborough. After a week, she wrote to her adoptive parents, the Wynns, to say she was enjoying herself and would spend another three weeks with the Tilsits. Then one evening, waiting for a bus, the Sharpe women offered her a lift. They took her to The Franchise, demanded that she become a domestic worker and, upon her refusal, imprisoned her in the attic. Betty alleges that they starved and beat her until she escaped.
When Blair meets Marion and Mrs. Sharpe, who are sensible and forthright and deny that the girl was ever in the house, he believes them and distrusts Betty. Yet Betty does have bruises from a beating, and she describes items and rooms inside The Franchise accurately.
Later in the week, the tabloid Ack-Emma, described as "run on the principle that two thousand pounds for damages is a cheap price to pay for sales worth half a million", features a long story from Betty's side, based on an interview with her vengeful brother, Leslie. This turns the townspeople of Milford against the Sharpes. One exception is Stanley Peters, a local car mechanic and friend of Blair, who says that Betty reminds him of an ex-girlfriend who was promiscuous and deceitful.
As interest in the case builds, locals engage in overt hostility against the Sharpes that culminates in The Franchise being destroyed by arson. Meanwhile Stanley has become a friend and ally, serving as a night guard for them along with his co-worker Bill, and then providing them shelter when their home is burned down.
Blair is assisted in his search for clues against Betty Kane by his cousin, Nevil Bennet, who also works at the law firm, and his friend Kevin Macdermott, a flamboyant London barrister. Nevil's engagement to a local clergyman's daughter ends due to her belief in the Sharpes' guilt.
The clues that the investigators chiefly uncover are in the manner of character evidence. For example, Betty has an eidetic memory. When she returns home after the alleged kidnapping, the only item she has with her is lipstick. She does not tell the Wynns about her abduction right away, but in various details over a few days. Betty's mother was promiscuous, "a bad mother and a bad wife", according to a neighbour. Mrs. Tilsit, the aunt, tells Blair how Betty spent most of her holiday time, not with her aunt and uncle but in unsupervised freedom.
Betty had befriended a teenage girl who had once worked for the Sharpes as a cleaner, whom Betty had bullied. She is described by a couple of people as demure and looking as though "butter wouldn't melt in her mouth"; one of them, a restaurant waiter, tells Blair that Betty came in for tea several times, looking wholesome: "And then one day she picked up the man at the next table. You could have knocked me over with a feather."
Robert Blair, a lifelong bachelor living with his Aunt Lin, becomes strongly attracted to Marion Sharpe, with her gypsy looks and colourful scarves. But Marion is determined to remain single and stay close to her sharp-tongued mother. Nevil, although engaged, also finds Marion attractive; an aspiring poet, he describes her as "all compact of fire and metal. ... People don't marry women like Marion Sharpe, any more than they marry winds and clouds. Any more than they marry Joan of Arc."
The suspense of the Sharpes' guilt or innocence is maintained to the very end, with detailed investigative work proving that Betty had been abroad at the time with a married man only paying off in a satisfactory fashion at the trial.
