Edward is an editor in a small English publishing house. The story concerns what happens when he receives a very good manuscript from Nicholas, an old friend, who up until now has been a hack writer. The manuscript sheds light on events both men lived through, and Edward comes to the conviction that it reveals that it was Nicholas who raped the woman Edward loved, and that he is therefore responsible for her subsequent suicide. Very carefully, he plots his revenge.
In Russia, in 1907, a rich lenient husband of a loose unfaithful woman is brutally murdered. She and her two lovers are suspects, but what about the stranger she met just before the murder? With no friends left, she and the stranger bond.
In the 17th century, under Louis XIII, the policy of Cardinal de Richelieu aimed at the definitive establishment of a monarchic power, and gave rise to a struggle against the great feudal lords, who favored a weak central power. Numerous conspiracies against the Cardinal were led by the high nobility. The one led by Henri Coiffier de Ruzé d'Effiat, marquis de Cinq-Mars, was the last and most famous of them.
