Rita grew up in Brooklyn, the only child of a narcissistic Italian mother and the GI she married at the end of World War II. But after her mother's death, she decides to leave her teaching job and descend upon her poor but aristocratic Italian relatives, the Count and Countess Casati in Assisi - the place she has idealised since she was a child. When her corpse is found in the family mausoleum, Alessandro Cenni of the State Police of Umbria must penetrate the secrets of the Casati family if he is to discover who killed Rita.