Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.

Defence attorney Robert Stern can scarcely believe his eyes when he meets with the mysterious client who has summoned him to a godforsaken industrial park. To his astonishment, the defendant is a ten-year-old boy, a fragile child with a chronic illness who insists that he was a murderer in a former life. Robert Stern's surprise turns into horror when he searches the cellar described by Simon and finds a human skeleton whose skull has been split by an axe. But this is only the beginning. Simon tells him of other victims whose bodies have lain undiscovered for years. Suddenly, the present becomes murderously dangerous as well...

A mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family's lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.