The classic scene of the upper middle-class in Rome: a duchess, the industrial husband and the many apparently respectable characters. It is actually a parade of dingy types: the Baron is a jewel thief, among the others there are social climbers, unscrupulous nobles who staged fake kidnappings and extortion attempts, and even a wife who comes to commission the murder of the ship-owner husband. The fate of these people will be the same: death at sea, but their misdeeds instead will remain unaddressed and an overzealous police commissioner will be promoted and transferred.