Taking a winter break in the Yorkshire Moors, and staying at The Old Silent Inn, Superintendent Richard Jury witnesses a most perplexing murder. Fascinated by the lovely widow of the victim, and puzzled by the dangerous cloak of silence that surrounds her, Jury is sufficiently intrigued to undertake his own unofficial - and very unpopular - investigation and becomes convinced that there are clues to be found in a kidnapping some eight years earlier.