By touching a recently deceased corpse, you gain one specific bit of knowledge from it that was known to the creature in life. You must form a question in your mind as part of casting the spell; if the corpse has an answer to your question, it reveals the information to you telepathically. The answer is always brief—no more than a sentence—and very specific to the framed question. It doesn’t matter whether the creature was your friend or enemy; the spell compels it to answer in any case.