Biographer Margaret Lea (Olivia Colman) arrives at the country house of famous novelist Vida Winter (Vanessa Redgrave).
Margaret is hesitant, as Vida is known for telling a different story each time she is asked about her background in interviews, so she requests some verifiable information from public record.
Their mother Isabelle was distracted by the abuse she suffered at the hands of her unhinged brother, Charlie, and eventually taken away to a mental asylum, so the girls were mostly left to their own devices, becoming unruly and anti-social.
Hester speaks to the local doctor about the girls and proposes they are separated as an experiment to see if their behaviour improves.
John's death troubles Margaret, as the younger Vida had insisted that Emmeline and Ambrose could not have done it, leaving her as the only possible suspect.
Vida confirms this, revealing that she wasn't Adeline, but presumably the daughter of Charlie, abandoned at the estate by her unknown mother.
Vida caught her preparing to burn the newborn boy alive, and managed to sneak him away and later left him on a doorstep in the nearby village, where he was taken in and named Aurelius Love.
The key-shaped scar on Vida's palm was a result of her locking the door of the room whilst the key was red hot.
Emmeline is the woman in white in the garden, and the events of her girlhood had further induced insanity, but Vida has felt honour-bound to care for her despite her illness.
[2] A number of scenes were filmed at Burton Agnes Hall, an Elizabethan manor house in East Yorkshire.
[3][4] Simon Cunliffe-Lister, the building's owner, called the filming a "strange experience": the production supplied its own furniture for the interior scenes, so "it felt as though someone else had moved in".
[2] The executive producers are Polly Hill for the BBC and Rosie Alison for Heyday Films, the production company behind The Thirteenth Tale.