Detective Beauty undertakes an investigation into reality. He tries to understand a world he cannot grasp, to capture the things that escape him.

Painter Peter Hartman is arrested at the scene of a murder. He soon turns out to have ties to the victim's young widow. As Inspector Stroomer begins to unravel the mystery, two very different sides of the story are presented to him. Now it is up to Stroomer to find enough photographic evidence to make out which version is the truth.