Robert Zuchini is an actor in love with the words of Victor Hugo. Every evening, he goes to a Parisian theater to read and recite his work. Offstage, he is melancholic and solitary. He has lost contact with his daughter, Lisbeth.
Commissaire Maigret investigates the murder of a former ambassador in the Quai d'Orsay, and its connection to a decades long affair with a recently widowed princess.
André Masson, specialist in modern art, receives a letter according to which a painting by Egon Schiele had been discovered in Mulhouse. He finds that the work has been missing since 1939. This discovery puts his career in danger.
