Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for the upper-class family Lelievre, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helène’s brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.

An irritable and stressed-out hotel manager begins to develop paranoid delusions about his wife's infidelity.

Insurance executive Charles suspects his wife Hélène of playing the field, so he has a private detective locate his wife's lover, author Victor Pegala.