Juliet, the English wife of a Roman industrialist Lorenzo Gherardi, is woken in the middle of the night by a telephone call, to learn that her husband has just died in a bomb whilst driving his car. Due to his left-wing politics, the public, friends, and even Lorenzo's mother have suspicions that he may have been transporting explosives for terrorists. This is the era of the Red Brigades and any involvement in terrorism carries severe punishment.
Juliet is grilled by a magistrate called Carosi - a sinister character, with a sulphurous whiff of Pluto about him. How can she prove her husband's innocence, and convince him that it was almost certainly the neo-Fascists who planted the bomb to discredit the left? Can she herself discover the truth?