A plumber is blackmailing several suburban housewives. When he confronts his latest victim, Margot Brenner, he runs into a dead end. She catches onto his scam and uses his own method to bring him to down.
At a house party, Lucy Prior allows herself to be hypnotized by Miles Farnham. While under his spell, she claims to be a woman living in 1859 and in the process of describing what she did, picks up a pair of scissors and kills her husband. In looking into the case, the coroner determines that in 1859 a woman did just as Lucy described but is suspicious that this could be a sham...