The Collards and the Vandervents form an extended family in the respectable, if ostentatious, splendour of Albert Villa, on the edge of the London suburb of Blackheath. But dangerous emotions boil beneath the calm surface in a household of ill-matched adults, thrown together for the sake of the family toy business; while the arrival of a scheming stranger stretches the fragile harmony of Albert Villa to breaking point, it becomes clear that the façade is crumbling when a gruesome death threatens to reveal sordid secrets and illicit love – and the darker, hidden face of Victorian life.