Charles Norbury is a successful writer of children's books, but he doesn't like children. An unlovable man, he has no friends, is arrogant, controlling, sadistic and cruel. His wife, starved of love and denied children of her own, has met another man. In their cottage in Surrey, a tape recorder has been left on during a conversation between his wife and her lover in which the latter plans the author's murder. Inevitably, it is heard by a third party!