Doug Palmer was a sceptic when he came to The Finches to work on his Phd thesis but he is soon drawn into the world of a deceased schoolmaster and his pupils. The Finches has existed behind its high walls since the original convent on the site and so much of its dark history of ghosts and murder intrudes upon the present. Just what did happen on the site during the war and why does even time itself seem not to behave as it should? Doug can find no rest until he has sifted myth and illusion from reality and until he has peeled away the last layer of the onion and revealed The Finches Secret.