Life is hard, or so Alvarez judged before Maurice Rook set sail from Port Llueso in his luxury motor cruiser and disappeared - then it becomes very much harder. Noyes, working for an English firm of investigators, arrives on Majorca suspecting Rook did not died from accidental drowning, but has attempted to perpetrate an insurance fraud intended to recoup the money he lost in a proposed development in the south of the Peninsula. The investigation requires considerable work on Alvarez's part, in the course of which he becomes friendly with Gail, Rook's niece, and he tries, against his conscience, to use this friendship to learn from her whether Rook is, indeed, alive and well. Inevitably, Dolores suspects that far from pursuing his work, his growing friendship with Gail evidences his susceptibility to the charm of young, foreign women. As Alvarez sadly accepts, where emotions are concerned, women weave fantasies out of moonbeams...