Plot summary

Commander Beech is more than happy to sell Wynward House, a cliff-side manor outside of Biddlecombe on the south coast of England, to Londoners, brother and sister Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald, who want to use it as their primary residence. Commander Beech, who sells it to them for a mere fraction of its market value, is up front that the last tenants he had in the house moved out because of the proverbial bumps they continually heard in the night. The sale is much to the dismay of the Commander's twenty year old maternal granddaughter, Stella Meredith, her long deceased parents to who the house originally belonged. Despite her mother, Mary Meredith, having died from falling off the cliffs when Stella was three when she herself last lived there, Stella has a strong emotional bond to the house as it is one of the last connections she has to her parents. After the sale, the Commander is less than cordial to the Fitzgeralds, with who he forbids Stella to associate, regardless of Stella and Rick's increasing friendship which blossoms into a romance. Rick and Pam also begin to hear those bumps in the night - most specifically a woman's wailing - and have an especially cold emotional feeling whenever in the house's ocean-view studio. With the help of the local doctor Dr. Scott, they begin to wonder if the rumors of Mary and/or a Spanish gypsy named Carmel (Mr. Meredith's supposed mistress) haunting the house - most specifically the studio - are indeed true, which the Commander believes places Stella in harm's way if she is ever to enter the house. So that Rick, Stella and Pamela can live in peace, they decide to do whatever they can to discover the truth. What they don't know is that the Commander and an old friend of Mary's, Miss Holloway, know more than they divulge.—Huggo