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Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood is an eighteen-year-old woman who lives with her older sister, Constance, and their sick Uncle Julian in a large stately manor. Six years prior, the rest of their family was poisoned at dinner and Constance was accused of killing them. Having been arrested and subsequently acquitted, Constance has now become a recluse, never leaving home and rarely taking visitors. Instead, Merricat goes into the village twice a week to run errands. The villagers avoid her and gossip about their family behind her back, all of them harboring a hatred of the wealthy Blackwoods and believing Constance got away with murder.

An old family friend, Helen Clarke, comes to the house for tea with a friend in tow called Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Wright is nervous around Constance but morbidly curious about the murders. Uncle Julian, who is writing a book about that fateful night, explains that the poison was added to the sugar, which Constance didn’t eat. Merricat was twelve at the time and had been sent to bed without supper for misbehaving. Uncle Julian himself consumed the sugar and nearly died. The rest of Merricat and Constance’s family succumbed right there in the dining room, including their mother, father, and younger brother, and Uncle Julian’s wife, their Aunt Dorothy. Helen Clarke tries to convince Constance to leave the house and come back to the world, an idea that distresses Merricat.

Merricat senses a change is coming, and it does, in the form of their cousin Charles. He arrives at the house one day for an extended visit, ostensibly to help out around the house but in reality because his father left him no money when he died and Merricat and Constance have plenty of it. Uncle Julian quickly deduces that Charles wishes to marry Constance. Indeed, Charles begins trying to assert himself as the man of the house. He spends lots of time with Constance, who starts to parrot ideas about Merricat requiring more supervision and Uncle Julian needing to be sent away to a care facility. He becomes fed up with Merricat’s repeated attempts to drive him away, and the sisters’ disregard for money; they keep all their money in a safe instead of a bank, for instance, and don’t care for expensive items.

Merricat destroys the bedroom where Charles is staying, ripping down the curtains and removing his things and replacing them with debris from outside. Constance ignores Charles’s demands that Merricat be punished and merely cleans the room. He continues to insist she face consequences, so Merricat starts a fire in his bedroom with a still-burning pipe that Charles left on the bedside table.

Charles runs to the village for help. Merricat and Constance hide and listen to the villagers who have come to watch the fire. Once the fire is out, the villagers rush into the house and destroy what’s left. Helen Clarke and her husband Jim arrive and try to stop them, and Jim discovers Uncle Julian dead in his room of heart failure. The villagers then leave the premises, and Merricat and Constance sleep in the woods.

The two sisters return the next morning to inspect the damage. Uncle Julian’s body was taken away by an ambulance in the night, and the top half of the house has been burned away, leaving the bottom half intact but completely ransacked. They tidy up the home and barricade themselves. Villagers begin to leave food on their doorstep with notes of apology, which Merricat and Constance accept. Helen Clarke begs them through the door to come live with her, but they don’t respond. Charles returns one more time to try and convince Constance to let him in; she stays silent on the other side of the door until he leaves.

Constance says she knows it was Merricat who poisoned the family all those years ago, and Merricat explains that she poisoned the sugar because she knew Constance never ate sugar. They two agree never to speak of it again, and continue to live their lives, content in their isolation.

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