A woman is driving alone one evening, when she almost run over a man lying in the road. She gets out of the car to see. Suddenly the man attacks her. Eva Jansson's dead body is found by a local farmer, who calls the police. Soon after fashion designer Maj Berg comes driving the same road and is stopped by the police. When the road is cleared for traffic Mrs. Berg drives on but happens to get a flat tire. While changing to the spare wheel, she finds a black notebook in the ditch. Back in Stockholm she opens the notebook and finds a strange jotting that concerns her.

The family of an old, loathed millionaire named Verner Vade are sick of his dictatorship, and are just waiting for him to fall over and die. When he is attacked one night and disappears, a nosey cops start to investigate. A few days later Verner comes home again, wounded, and is back to his old, angry routines. And the family have had enough.

Maria is a waitress at a local restaurant when an older man propose to her. She is a bit skeptical but agrees to marry him and become the mistress of his estate Kvarngården. Maria had a son which she was forced to give away for adoption when he was born because she could not take care of him. She has keep contact with the child and posed as a kind aunt. She has not told her new husband about her son and when the years go by and no children of their own comes along the resentment and bitterness grows. When the adoptive mother of Maria's son dies she and the adoptive father agrees that the best thing for the boy is to come and stay with Maria at Kvarngården. She also hope that it will make her husband come out of his bitterness to have a young boy around. The result is unfortunately quite the opposite.

The old Victor Branzell has a grandson, Alf, who is in love with a clerk in a glove shop, Lilian Lind. But Lilian with her simple background doesn't get accepted in the circles where Alf belongs, and they have now reached the conclusion that they can't have a future together. Marriage is impossible. Victor summons Lilian and Alf and starts telling them his life story.

1967 film by Arne Mattsson

1949 film by Arne Mattsson