A greedy wife suggests to her middle-aged husband, a somewhat successful but unstable artist obsessed with fame who may or may not be basing his paintings on his gloomy premonitions of future without even realizing it, to fake his death in order to get a much higher price for his gloomy paintings. He agrees and sinks his boat near the coastline. The plan works and his paintings are quickly sold out. However, his art dealer asks for more, so the artist starts painting again while hiding in his loft. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned. For starters, all he can paint are doom and gloom images and the buyers don't want that anymore. Two happy drunks and art critics start claiming that his new paintings are fakes, since no one had ever seen him draw them while he was alive. Two police inspectors suspect a fraud but can't yet prove it. The art dealer falls for the wife and she comes clean, so he suggests that they kill her husband for real this time.