In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other... or can be made to have seemed to do so!

Leslie Caron plays a young, pregnant, unmarried Frenchwoman who takes a room in a seedy boarding house in London. She soon makes friends with Toby, a struggling writer who lives downstairs, and eventually gets to accept her room and the strange characters in the house. But what to do about her baby? And what to do about Toby?