Dr Gary Lasch, prominent Greenwich, Connecticut, doctor and founder of the HMO Remington Health Management, is found dead in his home, his skull crushed by a blow with a heavy bronze sculpture, and his wife, Molly, in bed covered with his blood. It was the Lasches' housekeeper, Edna Barry, who made the grisly discovery the morning after Molly's unexpectedly early return from Cape Cod, where she had gone to seclude herself upon learning of her husband's infidelity. As the evidence against Molly grows, her lawyer plea-bargains a manslaughter charge to avoid a murder conviction.