When the owner of a boarding house dies, he leaves his modest property empire to his daughter under the care of her jeweller uncle "Henry" (Mervyn Johns) and her stepmother "Ruth" (Ellen Pollock). Turns out the stepmother is every bit as wicked as stereotype suggests - and soon she decides to send the daughter out to work and to up the rent for the three elderly lodgers who live with them - safe in the knowledge that they could never afford it. One of these ladies has a kitten that has an habit of getting into rooms he's not allowed in, and when he is found dead the old ladies assume he has bee...