"Life hasn't always been easy here, but nobody has tried to murder me before." Roger Fordyce, a little battered by an unhappy affair, visits the Albergo Del Castello, a splendid hotel located in a little town outside Rome. While wandering the grounds one morning, Roger believes he sees a dead body with long black hair floating in a water tank. The hotel-owner dismisses the corpse as the body of a mongrel dog, and Roger returns to England...