But could have been much more mysterious. Why were the police and the college so keen to hush everything up? As it turns out - for no reason. Their dismissive attitude is never explained. The corpses pile up. Mary Johnson, step-daughter of one of them, is left alone in a grand house that seems to consist of one room with features painted onto the walls. Her face is quirky rather than pretty, but the hero seems to fall for her instantly, despite being vamped by a blonde waitress with loose morals.
Mary's step-father and brother were involved in a wartime racket, looting storage facilities and abandoned houses. Presumably in wartime Britain it was harder to find owners and inventories. But that was 15 years ago, and it seems foolhardy to sell the missing antiques openly in a Cambridge high street shop.
The original death came about while one of the gang was searching for a stash of loot - why wait 15 years?
Much is left unexplained. There is a brief glimpse of a wild masquerade where the girls' costumes reveal rather a lot. And the local café seems staffed by extras from a Hammer film of the bodice-ripping kind. They make the heroine seem even more frumpy.
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