In the dock stood a girl, but could she be the one who had lately entered and was seated between her female companions?... Even the judge, sitting in Mr. Justice Deidpole's seat, was unfamiliar, a wraith from another century. A faint perfume, as of herbs or wholesome flowers, stole to the young man's nostrils... Was it reality, this scene, or a form of nightmare?

In the 1930s, when a string of pearls is stolen from a wealthy guest at the Wheatsheaf hotel in Derriford, suspicion quickly falls on Ann Bacon, an 18-year-old maid. Though she protests her innocence, she is arrested and hauled up in front of the county court. In 1752, a rich traveller stays at the Cock Inn just outside the town, where she, too, is relieved of her pearls. Everyone is convinced of the guilt of Patience Passey, an 18-year-old serving girl at the inn, and she too is arrested and tried at the local assizes.

Linking the two eras is a marshal of the court who starts to realise he may be the only person able to witness both cases first-hand.