It's about 6 pm, a cold evening, from the window of his office Angelo Jacopetti scrutinizes carefully, the lively movement of those who, given the time, are preparing to return home, after a long day of work, in a Rome lively, nocturnal, pungent due to the low temperature, full of pulsating lights and people, he actually observes them with the envy dictated by the impossibility of doing the same, since an important official of the Ministry of the Interior invited him to stay at the commissariat for an important communication. Communication arrives. Jacopetti must go immediately to the ministry. A service car awaits him. Once, after some waiting, Jacopetti meets Scornati, the important executive, who summoned him urgently. Scornati summarizes the facts, in their singular sequence. Two days before, an envelope had come to the Scornati secretariat, coming from a historical and prestigious notary's office in the capital. The event had aroused some curiosity and perplexity, because the envelope had been in possession of the said study for many years, with the precise indication to deliver it, in Scornati, that specific morning of February 17th. Jacopetti, puzzled by the strange circumstance, inquires about the content.The package contained an object to be delivered to Jacopetti, of which, however, Scornati, does not intend to specify the nature ( nor less than ever deliver it to the "recipient"), but above all there is the announcement for the afternoon of the discovery of a corpse, in a car, in via Tiepolo. The body is actually, to everyone's surprise, found right in the place indicated. The victim is a person of very old age, in the name of Giovanni Santoro. The name does not sound familiar to Commissioner Jacopetti, except, then, when he is shown a image of the deceased, to recognize the features of a man who had gone to the police station some time before for threats received, without knowing how to specify, either who or why he threatened him. Scornati communicates to Jacopetti that the strangeness of the events, had advised him to suspend him for a few days from the service and even to order the surveillance of the commissioner's home. Jacopetti therefore thoughtfully goes home, unaware, that the bizarre succession of events was actually nothing less than the premise of a much more complex one story, which however intricate, for its intimate "coherence", would have proved to be a simple story (and quite logical).