It is vacation time at the Winwood Manor School. Autumn break, sometime in the mid-1940s. Quite a few students and teachers are unable to go home for some reason or the other. Thus, the energetic Emma, her little brother David, and their friends, Edward, Keith, and Julia, find themselves bored and thirsting for adventure. Their meeting with the ethereal Marianne leads to their, rather unexpectedly, finding themselves embroiled in the investigation of a mystery which gets more and more confusing and serious at every step. The arrival of a "handsome stranger" at school, and discovery of a hidden passage, sets the young people off on a thrilling and frightening path... It unfolds a long forgotten tale of lost love, a family curse and hidden wealth!