A kept woman's murder leads detectives St-Cyr and Kohler to the upper crust of occupied Paris.

It is December 1942, and the Parisian Gestapo agents pass their days by executing dissidents and plotting the destruction of the Resistance. Homicide detectives Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler, meanwhile, must make do solving the gritty crimes with which the Nazi elite do not bother. Just hours after they learn that St-Cyr's wife and child have died, the partners confront an ugly murder that turns out to be very glamorous indeed. In a pay-by-the-hour hotel, a young woman is found surrounded by counterfeit coins and an ocean of blood. Her ID says she is an art student, but the quality of her clothes tell St-Cyr that she must be the mistress of a very rich man. The girl's killer is powerful, and guilty of much worse than murder.