When a game of marbles ends with a body, the citizens of Goodladies Junction fear that one of their neighbours was wrongly hung for murder, twenty years before. They turn to their local policeman, PC Ned Machray, who has to cope with a runaway pig and a wayward cinema usherette as he picks his way through a web of blackmail, stolen love affairs and guilty silence. He is hit by a widow's bucket, nearly strangled on a drainpipe and shot by his own side. But he is no nearer solving the mystery until Timberdick, the cheapest call-girl on Goodladies Road, saves the day and the true depth of poison is horribly revealed.