After a wealthy dowager who has made a substantial donation to her alma mater suddenly disappears, Nancy Drew sets out to solve the mystery.

While participating in a contest at a local newspaper in which school children are asked to submit a news story, local attorney Carson Drew's daughter Nancy intercepts a real story assignment. She "covers" the inquest of the death of a woman who was poisoned. Nancy doesn't think the young woman accused of the crime is guilty and corrals her neighbor Ted into searching for a vital piece of evidence and stumbles onto the identity of the real killer.

When a close friend of the Drew family is accused of murder in a rural community, Nancy, aided by boyfriend Ted, helps her lawyer father expose the real killers.

Nancy helps two aging spinsters fulfill the byzantine provisions of their father's will, but the murder of their chauffeur complicates matters.