When Jem Rosco - sailor, adventurer and legend - blows in to the local pub, The Maiden's Prayer, in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone are delighted. The whole place has a strange, unreal quality: the village that time forgot. Backed by a worked-out quarry, with a shingle beach and a north-facing quay, there's little to recommend it to tourists. When Rosco disappears again, they think nothing of it; that's the sort of man he is. Until the lifeboat is launched to a hoax call-out and his body is found in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove, a place with legends of its own. This is an uncomfortable case for Venn. Greystone is a stronghold of the Barum Brethren and he came here as a child. Faith and superstition mix as another body is found in Scully, and Matthew finds his judgement clouded. The wind continues to howl, and he realizes that his own life is in danger.