When Charlotte - a beautiful, broke student - is offered a job cat-sitting in a vast Georgian manor house over a long weekend, at £200 per night, she can't believe her luck, but her employers are far from being the harmless eccentrics that they appear to be.

Dick Hurt - a broke, alcoholic, pill-popping private detective - is drowning his sorrows with whisky and snooker (and questioning his sanity with each repeated occurrence of his recently murdered girlfriend, Sophie) when he receives a phone call one night from a wealthy businessman, Mr. Fox, offering him a job...