Victorian ne'er-do-well Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) assaults and murders his wife's virginal housekeeper. With the reluctant assistance of loyal brother John (Lee Bowman), Stephen remorselessly consigns the girl's corpse to the river. But as John's affection for Stephen's wife Marjorie (Jane Wyatt), police suspicion about the girl's disappearance, and the depths of Stephen's depravity all escalate, the river itself provokes a horrifying reunion between victim and murderer. By House by the River's climax, "melodrama is transformed into a work of art and a moral nightmare" (Lang biographer Lotte Eisner).