There are two problems with Emilio and his career as a pulp writer. Emilio is a bumbling fellow who has absolutely nothing in common with the heroes he writes about. Second, Emilio can't seem to publish anything under his own name.
Meant to be a psychological study of a dysfunctional couple and an equally unbalanced maid, this slow-paced, murky melodrama stars Michele Morgan and Robert Hossein as Thelma and Jess, two Americans who move into a down-at-the-heels Paris neighborhood. The couple is still suffering from the loss of their only son in an automobile accident that happened some time in the distant past. Thelma tends to drown her sorrows in alcohol, while Jess is introspected and morose. After they hire a maid to help out with the housework, she falls for the taciturn Jess. Her interest seems to be only a simple attraction, yet appearances, as it turns out, are deceiving.
When Guillaume Valmont dies in a car accident, the only thing he leaves his wife Isabelle is his pharmacy. She never loved her older husband and she regards his death as a deliverance. At the funeral, she meets Judith, widow too, and she soon realises that her husband had been leading a double life. A short while later, the pharmacy is broken into, but nothing is stolen. Police Inspector Laforêt is put in charge of the case. Isabelle becomes suspicious when Judith offers to buy the pharmacy.
