At first, they put Konrad's absentmindedness down to an immoderate fondness for alcohol. For years he had been a benign parasite on the Koch family, first as the childhood playmate of Thomas, heir to the Koch family fortune, later as caretaker of the Koch family holiday villa on Corfu. And they, in their turn, had used him as the mood took them. But when the villa burns down because of Konrad's forgetfulness, Elvira Senn, the matriarch of the Koch family, puts him on a strict regime. No longer ...