At the height of World War II, in the county of Sussex, an eighty-nine-year-old man, a once famous detective, retired and interested only in his apiary, lives out his days. Unexpectedly, fate brings him together with a mute Jewish refugee boy. The only thing Linus has left from his former life is a gray gray parrot. But what do the long strings of numbers that the bird pronounces mean? Secret SS codes? Or codes for Swiss bank accounts? Or maybe everything is much simpler and worse? A real hunt begins for the boy's parrot, and a murder occurs in the house where he lives...