Farmer Tobias Vogl's wife finds his corpse, strangled with some cord. He was on duty guarding his Stetzing village's 'May tree', which was stole that night, presumably by the rival village's 'burschenschaft'. Tobias's forbidden lover Gerda Weinberg, the first woman leading the Mangfeld village fanfare, is suspect as in charge of robbing the tree. Fellow farmer Xaver Dopfer, in Furching, blames Tobias for the local volunteer fire department's failure, due to poor equipment, to save Xaver's brother. Stetzing farmer Gregor Zwillinger, deep in debt, cried corruption when his land wasn't granted lucrative municipal building license, unlike Vogl's. All lack alibis, like Tobias's fresh widow Angelika, who discovered his affair with Gerda, who carries Tobias's baby, while he told Angelika to wish no offspring.
—KGF Vissers