The narrator, Max Morden, returns to the Cedars, a house he last visited more than 50 years ago. The house is now a guesthouse run by Miss Vavasour; when Max was a child, it was a grand holiday villa rented out to affluent holiday makers. Max and his parents spend their summers in a wooden chalet neighboring the Cedars, and the various tenants of the Cedars are a key point of interest for Max’s holidays. One August, the house it taken by the Grace family: Carlo and Connie Grace and their two children, twin girl and boy Chloes and Myles. The Graces travel with their governess, Rose. Max’s first glimpse of the Grace family is their car, which has books and a much-used touring map of France casually strewn in the back. The family seems glamorous and sophisticated to Max, who is immediately fascinated and refers to them as “the Gods” and “the Graces.”

The narrative shifts to the more recent past. Max recalls his wife, Anna, receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer from her doctor. Max finds the doctor’s name, Mr. Todd, darkly amusing in its echoes of the murderous barber of Fleet Street.