When a 'piercing, heartrending' scream rings out across the grounds of a Russian country estate, it brings to a shuddering halt not just a convivial shooting party but an entire summer of debauchery. The drunken sprees of the dissolute Count Karneyev have turned his once magnificent house and gardens into a den of indulgence and depravity, and now the young and beautiful Olga Urbenin has been found dead in the forest. Examining magistrate Zinovyev is called to investigate and suspicion immediately falls on Olga's cuckolded, aged husband, who emerges from the forest with hands covered in blood. But Olga is at the centre of a tangled web of relationships involving secret lovers, a mad possessive father, even the magistrate himself.