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.