As told to a psychiatrist: Mr. Peabody, middle-aged Bostonian on vacation with his wife in the Caribbean, hears mysterious, wordless singing on an uninhabited rock in the bay. Fishing in the vicinity, he catches…a mermaid. He takes her home and, though she has no spoken language, falls in love with her. Of course, his wife won’t believe that thing in the bathtub is anything but a large fish. Predictable complications follow in rather tame fashion.

In the late 19th century, Paula Alquist is studying music in Italy, but ends up abandoning her classes because she’s fallen in love with the gallant Gregory Anton. The couple marries and moves to England to live in a home inherited by Paula from her aunt, herself a famous singer, who was mysteriously murdered in the house ten years before. Though Paula is certain that she sees the house’s gaslights dim every evening and that there are strange noises coming from the attic, Gregory convinces Paula that she’s imagining things. Meanwhile, a Scotland Yard inspector, Brian Cameron, becomes sympathetic to Paula’s plight.