Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are summoned to Theobald Grange, the Warwickshire home of Lady Heminworth.
Being of a nervous and superstitious disposition, her Ladyship lives in fear.
Her husband and elder son were recently murdered, apparently by the ghost of a court jester who was executed on the site centuries before.
The apparition has warned that she, too, is to die.
Holmes rejects a supernatural explanation, although his adversary seems unaffected by gunfire and is able to take fl.