The Vital Principle

In 1815, an inquiry agent, Mr. Knighton Gaunt, is hired by Lord Crowley to attend a séance with the express purpose of revealing the spiritualist as a fraud. The séance ends abruptly, however, when some of the guests become too nervous to continue. During the turmoil, Lord Crowley dies after drinking poisoned brandy. Instead of simple fraud, Gaunt is now faced with a murder investigation.

All the guests are long-time friends of Lord Crowley, so suspicion turns to the stranger in the room: the spiritualist, Miss Prudence Barnard. She seems to have a good motive since Lord Crowley had hired Gaunt to discredit her. But as Gaunt digs deeper into the twisted history of the guests at Rosecrest, he discovers others may have even better motives. As the investigation continues, long-time friends turn against one another and the tension mounts as deadly secrets reveal that not everyone at Rosecrest held their host in high regard. Gaunt is soon challenged to separate fact from fiction and find the real killer before he, or she, can strike again.