The head butler of Sunnyside Cottage is trying to wrangle his unruly staff, but they all storm off, leaving him alone to manage Sunnyside Cottage. The new tenants arrive: Carrie Innes, a wealthy spinster, and Liddy, her Cockney maid. Carrie opines that nothing ever happens to her, but Thomas tells her there are strange goings on in the house. Sally, Carrie’s niece, arrives but surprises everyone by bringing Jack, a friend from school. Carrie is not happy having a young man for the weekend but plays cards with Sally and Jack to thwart the lovers. Liddy sees a terrifying face at the window and makes a scene. After Carrie goes to bed, Jack and Sally seem to be plotting something nefarious against someone named Reggie Armstrong. The lights mysteriously go out, and when they come back on, there is a dead body in the middle of the living room. Thomas calls the local detective, and it’s revealed that the dead body is Reggie Armstrong, the son of Jared Armstrong, who owned the house when he was alive. Jared was the head of the Atlantic Trust Bank from which Reggie had been fired. A crowbar and cufflink were left behind by whoever killed Reggie. Jack has disappeared, and it is revealed that he, too, was fired from the Atlantic Trust. Jarvis, the detective, suggests that the women help load the dead body into his car so it won’t remain in the middle of their living room. Everyone seems to have a gun on them, and in the final moment of Act I, Sally reveals that she has one as well.

Act II begins the next morning with all three women talking about their uncomfortable night’s sleep. They all decide to get in the roadster and go off looking for Jack, but just as they are getting ready to leave, a dead body falls out of the closet. It is Thomas, the butler. They call Detective Jarvis, but before he can arrive, a mysterious Romany woman arrives, saying she is the groundskeeper and insisting on reading Carrie’s cards. The Detective arrives, and the Romany woman hides in the kitchen. Everyone discusses the current state of the Atlantic Trust, the bank owned by Jared Armstrong which holds all of Sally’s money and from which Jack was fired. The Detective suggests that the ladies help him get Thomas’s body into his car, and he departs. A terrible storm comes up, and Liddy and Carrie pledge their eternal friendship. Then the Detective returns and says that the roads are unusable in the storm and that Thomas’s body has disappeared from his car. The Detective goes out to investigate a broken window and Jared Armstrong, the owner of the house who everyone thought was dead, arrives. He had been Thomas, the butler, in disguise. He explains that the missing money from the Atlantic Trust, which Jack had been accused of stealing, is hidden away in a secret room under the stairs. He was trying to get in and get it disguised as the butler when his son arrived, trying to steal it himself, and Jared accidentally shot him dead. He takes the money and locks the women in an air-tight secret room where the money was hidden. He’s about to get away with it when Zara, the Romany woman, comes out of the kitchen and shoots him dead. Zara was Jack in disguise. The women are released from the secret room, the Detective returns with only a shoulder wound, and they all depart swearing never to return to Sunnyside Cottage.