Libuše Mincová

A simple print worker selflessly cares for his sick mother. He spends all his free time with her and the only hobby he indulges in from time to time is model railways. But the arrival of a beautiful girl changes everything. The hero suddenly falls into a love infatuation, not knowing how to cope with the conflict of his unrecognised feelings and his concern for his mother...

The protagonist (Rudolf Hrusinsky) is a dull, fat, shy government clerk indulging in voyuerism and ego fantasies. In love with another clerk (Kveta Fiolova), he is urged on in his pursuit by a commiserate executive. The story is told in a flashback sequence as the cuckolded Hrusinsky attempts suicide by gassing himself in his bathtub. The "Murder" of the title is not a murder as such, rather the murder that Hrusinsky remembers planning upon discovering his wife's unfaithfulness with his supposed friend and advisor. Both plots failing in his mind, he loses himself in fantastic reveries of his funeral and of hypocritical mourners. ' Deciding (perhaps) that this is not the way out either, he gives up the attempt and imagines a life of reconciliation and eventual affluence.

At the end of May 1918, released prisoners return to the Rumburk garrison from Russian captivity, hoping that the war is over for them. The only thing they want is to get their withheld ...