It's 1940. France has fallen and the capital is being bombed both day and night. When widower Albert Morrison is stabbed to death in his flat, his daughter, Ava, tells Detective Constable Bill Trave that she would read the newspapers to him every evening because of his failing eyesight. The night before his death he had become excited when she read him an obscure obituary notice. At Morrison's funeral,Ava learns from an old colleague that her father worked for MI6 before the War – and the obituary notice was a coded message preparing for an assassination ...