Art historian Robert Wyatt is summoned to the house of his old flame, Margaret Trelawny. Her father, noted Egyptologist Abel Trelawny, was found in a coma in his study with claw marks on his wrist. Per his dictated wishes, Trelawny asks that he be kept in the room with his Egyptian artifacts with two witnesses at all times. Hoping to solve the mystery of Trelawny's case, Wyatt contacts Corbeck, an archaeologist who worked with Trelawny in the 1970s in uncovering the tomb of an Egyptian queen.