During a performance at the Château de Blois, an industrialist is murdered as he plays the role of Henri III. Arthur, the young actor playing the Duke of Guise, becomes prime suspect. Police Captain Alice Deschamps heads the investigation with her ex and Arthur's father, Detective Inspector Denis Frécant.

Paris 1930. Paul has only ever had one and the same horizon: the high walls of the orphanage, an austere building in the Parisian working class suburbs. Entrusted to a joyful country woman, Célestine, and her husband, Borel, the rather stiff gamekeeper of a vast estate in Sologne, the city child, recalcitrant and stubborn, arrives in a mysterious and disturbing world, that of a sovereign and wild region. The huge forest, misty ponds, heaths, and fields all belong to the Count de la Fresnaye, an elderly taciturn man who lives alone in his manor.