The Edgeworth household's disputed heir and dead infant
In an 1880s English country house, Duncan Edgeworth tyrannises his wife Ellen and daughters Nance and Sibyl, and after Ellen dies he quickly marries the much younger Alison. Alison bears a son, Richard, who displaces Duncan's nephew Grant as heir, but the boy's real father is Grant; the infant later dies in a killing arranged by Sibyl through a servant. Each revelation is absorbed into the family's clipped, polite conversation instead of breaking it, and the household closes over the crimes and carries on under the same head.