Puck has managed to get a job working for the eccentric Nobel Literature Prize laureate Andreas Hallman. Hallman is charming and genial, but also a neurotic tyrant. He forces his wife, his three grown children and a daughter-in-law to live in seclusion together, separated from the rest of the world. One night, after the daughter-in-law's birthday dinner, Hallman's eldest and favourite son dies. The question is whether the son, who was frail and sickly, died of natural causes or not.