The adventure is set in Boston in 1973, a city simmering with cultural tensions, carved up between rival organised crime groups, and which is unusually cold and foggy, even for a Massachusetts October.
The characters are all associated with or employed by Angel Investigations, a private detective agency formed by Eva Angel to give back to the community. Angel Investigations is run at a loss, mostly because of a lot of pro bono work, and is propped up by Eva's personal fortune, a sizeable inheritance.
The investigators are:
- Danny Angel, Eva's brother, a world traveller, estranged from the Angel family, and recently returned home in search of direction.
- Frank Armstrong, Danny's old school friend and occasional agency muscle. There are some suggestions that he has a shady past, which in a city like Boston, could mean all sorts of horrible things.
- Al Chinard, Eva's on/off boyfriend, occasional heavy, and specialist in getting into places in which he's not supposed to be.
- Muriel Shepherd, Danny and Eva's aunt, a struggling actor who helps out the agency between acting jobs.
26/10/1973:
The investigators clambered into Al's messy car and went to Wesley's apartment. There they found notes on stories on which he had been working, including a ghost sighting and household pets drained of blood by a "vampire"; these two events took place close to each other. They also found a number for the Falcon Hotel; they rang and the desk clerk -- Robert -- told them that Wesley had not been seen since the 21st and owed payment for the room. They were also holding some of Wesley's belongings until payment was made.
The group went to the hotel and paid the fee. They received a book bag full of notes and research materials, indicating an interest in dancing ghosts, mention of a "priest", and an intention to visit Mary Wilson, the person who reported the ghost sighting.
The investigators then visited Wilson, who told them that her neighbour Pat Bibby received a parcel on Saturday the 13th and was later seen dancing a "strange jig" in her living room. Police visited the house on Monday the 15th and found Bibby hanged. Bibby had a funeral service at Our Lady of Grace on Thursday the 18th, and on the evening of the 18th, Wilson saw Bibby return to her home, enter for about 20 minutes, then leave again, vanishing into the fog. Wilson also reported that Wesley had interviewed her and seemed most interested in the dancing aspect.
They pondered investigating Bibby's house as it was just across the road, but decided to return after dark. Instead they visited Our Lady of Grace and spoke to Father O'Brian, who seemed preoccupied. The priest was caught a bit off-guard by their disconnected, scattershot lines of questioning but he revealed that Bibby was a good Catholic, knew that suicide was a mortal sin, and seemed relatively happy, so her death came as a considerable shock. He confirmed that Bibby was not buried on church grounds -- because of the suicide -- but that a local charitable organisation, the Sisters of Mercy, had offered to have her buried on the grounds of their building.
O'Brian dismissed the stories of exsanguinated pets, considering them to be idle gossip, and didn't have much time for tales of Pat Bibby returning from the grave; he was unimpressed when Al pointed out that Jesus Christ had done the same.
Aunt Muriel prodded O'Brian until he revealed that he was concerned because his parishioners John and Lauren O'Connor's toddler Julian had gone missing the night before. The police were involved, of course, but it was still a concern. The priest was unwilling to involve the investigators as the O'Connors had enough to worry about already, but again Muriel prodded until he agreed to telephone the family and ask if they would be willing to speak to the people from Angel.
(While O'Brian disappeared to make the phone call, the investigators had a quick sniff around the church for anything suspicious and found nothing.)
The priest returned to say that the O'Connors had agreed to see the investigators and gave them the address. There, they ran into some openly hostile Boston PD officers and learned that a Detective Jordan was on the case. They searched the house, finding nothing unusual beyond a suggestion that the boy's window had been forced, and some cobweb strands on the outside of the window and in the garden below. The cobwebs seemed normal enough, just out of place. Al took a sample.
Promising to return with any news, the investigators then went back to Pat Bibby's house, which had been boarded up by the police. Al scouted around the back and found that the boards had been carefully removed from the back door. Entering they found signs of Bibby's suicide, and a mysterious box that had been posted to Bibby from Italy on the 3rd. Inside was a mass of webbing in which was a small spherical depression. They also found some tiny crystals, about the size of rice grains.
In the cellar they noted that one wall was newer than the others, and had been put up in a hurry. Big Frank bashed this sloppy construction down in about an hour and in the cavity beyond the investigators found a beheaded and bound naked corpse of a man. Frank noted that the neck wound was clean, probably from a very sharp implement, and that the body had almost mummified, probably from the warm and dry conditions behind the wall. Al pondered how Frank knew so much about corpses...
Finding nothing else of interest, they decided to clean up and then call in the discovery of the body, anonymously. Then they decamped to a grotty late night diner to go over their findings and plan their next moves.
