Talk of the Crimea and the terror of Napoleon, talk of Dumb Lukey's crazy acts and the romance between Lucinda and Joe Lee, talk and ale flowed free at The Malted Shovel, the exuberant heart and soul of Hollinbury Hamlet. The Beatrice ('Beat'), hard-headed and wise, and her sister Dot, so gentle and mild, cared for their invalid father and for Lucinda, their pretty orphaned neice. The inn was their livelihood but village business was ever Beat's business too. And now some dark cloud had descended on them all. Closer to home than the cruel wars and more frightening than old Boney himself were the killing of Joe Lee's father in a drunken brawl and the unsolved murder of Martin Shulmead, the blacksmith. Larlee, who had been so beautiful, so houseproud as a wife and mother, now entertained a different man every night. Her own daughter Alice was raped and became pregnant. Alice, robbed of her innocence, ran away, choosing to escape from her mother's desperate, degenerate world. Lucinda too suffered rape, only to die giving birth to Percy, a wilful violent child, who grew up with his ageing aunts. Years later, Percy and Alice's son Adam met as students in London, wild young men driven only by their appetite for women, drink and gambling. It was their fate to visit a new horror upon the village of their birth. Hollinbury's legacy of violence and disgrace still haunted the village.