 John lives in a spacious villa outside Paris, where he manages a bridal dress factory belonging to his deceased mother and financially supported by his wife Mildred.He and Mildred are ill-matched, but she refuses to consider his appeals for a divorce.Whenever he hears that one of the models working at the dress factory is to be married, he hacks her to death with a meat cleaver while she is wearing her bridal gown, burns the body in the furnace of his greenhouse, and uses the ashes as fertilizer.