It's summer, 1936. The writer, Josephine Tey, joins her friends in the holiday village of Portmeirion to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, are there to sign a deal to film Josephine's novel, "A Shilling for Candles", and Hitchcock has one or two tricks up his sleeve to keep the holiday party entertained.

"In the summer of 1915, the sudden death of a young girl brings grief and notoriety to Charleston Farmhouse on the Sussex Downs. Years later, Josephine Tey returns to the same house--now much changed--and remembers the two women with whom she once lodged as a young teacher during the Great War. As past and present collide, with murders decades apart, Josephine is forced to face the possibility that the scandal which threatened to destroy those women's...

Josephine and Archie gather with friends to celebrate the holidays on 1938 Cornwall’s stormy coast before the festivities are interrupted by two brutal deaths on St. Michael’s Mount and the arrival of a world-famous film star.