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.

Two former boxers meet in the ring again after - years for a re-run of an old match. The old loser currently works as a factory executive and he is unwilling to reconcile with his old defeat. He challenges the old winner whose job in a garage puts him on the opposite end of the career ladder. The match is a battle fought between two men who stand for two different attitudes to life. The confrontation results in the revelation that the winner is not always the one whose arm is raised by the referee after the last round.