Witnessing the fatal defenestration of neighbor Jacob Harley while caroling in 1835 London, young Charles Dickens and his fiancée, Kate, disagree about the case's chief suspect, Emmanuel Screws, an unpleasant counting-house codger with a rather colorful imagination.

London, December 1835. Charles and Kate are out with friends and family for a chilly night of caroling and good cheer. Their singing is interrupted by a body plummeting from an upper window of a house-- his neck wrapped in chains. The dead man, Jacob Harley, was the business partner of the resident of the house, an unpleasant codger who owns a counting house, one Emmanuel Screws. Before Dickens can investigate further, Harley's corpse is stolen-- and Charles is visited in his quarters by what appears to be Harley's ghost. Dickens suspects Screws, the same penurious penny pincher who denied his father a loan years ago. Can he ensure that the next one in chains is the guilty part? -- adapted from jacket