The Teifi Valley's coroner, Harry Probert-Lloyd, is struggling: with the blindness that drove him home from London, with the county magistrates and with an estate teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. He needs an escape, so when Dr Benton Reckitt is asked to give a second opinion on the apparently natural death of young Lizzie Rees, Harry willingly goes with him. But mistakes are made. Harry becomes embroiled in local rumours and in Esther Rees's search for the truth behind her daughter's sudden death. What is Lizzie Rees's father hiding? Was somebody else in the farmhouse on the night she died? And, most crucially for Harry, will he be able to uncover the mystery, and solve personal difficulties that threaten to tear him apart?