The body of a dead woman is found in a barrel hurtling down a hill in the middle of the night. Her death is strangely reminiscent of the legend of Paracols, about a mediaeval lord of the manor who put a witch into a barrel filled with nails and shards of glass, and pushed it down a ravine.
The prime suspect is the husband, a violent and jealous painter from Collioure, for whom the victim was both model and muse. Alice Castel, from the Collioure gendarmes, and Pascal Loubet, from the Perpignan police, will have to join forces to solve a case which is more complex than it at first appears.
