A woman is found dead one morning, in the Mill Race, at the exact place where a young woman drowned a year previously. Are the two cases interlinked? The local police are up against it, as the local villagers are determined to say nothing, so the case is soon passed to Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard. Half of his job is convincing the locals to reveal what they know, to speak justly for the dead, an alternative title for the book itself. Eventually he begins to reap the rewards, but with locals not above fabricating evidence for a quiet life, will he discover who the killer is?