Actor Toby Flood, formerly of big and small screen but now seldom seen on either, arrives in Brighton on the first Sunday in December with the other cast members of the Joe Orton play Lodger In The Throat. They have been on tour since September, but hopes of a West End transfer have been abandoned and they are all looking forward to the end of the run the following Saturday. Flood is visited that night by his estranged wife. Jenny, now living with wealthy entrepreneur Roger Colborn, whose country residence, Wickhurst Manor, lies just north of Brighton. Jenny runs a shop in the Lanes and is worried about a strange man who has taken to hanging around outside. Roger has dismissed her concerns, but she wants something done and hopes Toby will agree for old times' sake to follow the man to wherever he lives and get to the bottom of his behaviour. Reluctantly, Flood agrees. Next day he trails the man to his house and confronts him. Derek Osawin is an unemployed loner, who blames Colborn for his father's death from cancer, on account of dangerous practices at the long since closed plastics factory run by Roger and his father, the late Sir Walter Colborn.