In fog-bound London the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a dispute over conflicting wills, has dragged through the Court of Chancery for generations, ruining all it touches. Esther Summerson, an orphan taken in by the kindly John Jarndyce, tells half the story; a sardonic present-tense narrator tells the rest, as the family lawyer Tulkinghorn pries into the past of the cold, proud Lady Dedlock.