The meeting of John and Florence Dowell and Edward and Leonora Ashbumham in a German health spa is the centre of a train of lies, deceptions, adulterous love triangles and deaths. John Dowell, a memorably "unreliable" narrator, calls it "the saddest story I have ever heard". His narrative distance stems partly from the distance in time of the events, partly from his absence from some of them, but mostly from his ignorance or denial of realities as intimate as his wife's serial deception.