In a strange windowless circular study in a New York mansion, a wealthy recluse is found stabbed to death, with only a mute servant and a mocking parrot as witnesses. Veteran detective Ebenezer Gryce, aided by the clever spinster Amelia Butterworth, unravels a crime rooted in an old family vendetta. Anna Katharine Green, the mother of the American detective novel, wrote this 1900 Gryce mystery,
