‘An excellent detective novel... the characters are real human beings’ New York Times‘So full of high spirits and sprightly wit’ The TimesThis 2024 Spitfire Publishers ebook and paperback edition represent the first republication of this classic of the ‘Golden Age of Crime’ in almost a centuryMagda Druce lay stiffly across the sofa end. Her legs, in their pink silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, stuck out like doll’s legs from her short skirt; her dangling head had fallen back revealing the cause of her death; her short fuzz of hair was dark with half-dried blood, and her cheek and brow so broken and disfigured that the pretty outline of the rest of the face enhanced the horror of such ruin. The crime scene is the Theatre Royal in Peridu, a provincial mining town in Wales. The murderer, it seems from all the evidence, is fellow actress Martella Baring. But amateur sleuth Sir John Saumarez thinks otherwise. The London actor-manager, famous for his portrayal of society rôles created to fit his personality, sees clues overlooked and the case bungled by Scotland Yard. Sir John, elegant, imperturbable, aloof, investigates the apparently open-and-shut case.

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Clemence (pseudonym Of Winifred Ashton) & Simpson, Helen Dane

Clemence Dane, Helen de Guerry Simpson

by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson

London: Tom Stacey 1st Printing

Stacey (Tom) Ltd

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

London, England, 1971

London, ©1971, 1929

When Sir John Saumerez, the famous actor-manager, told an aspiring young actress, called Martella Baring, to go and get a couple of years' experience in provincial rep., he couldn't have known that this cliché-advice would bring her into the shadow of the gallows.
Whether or not she had committed the murder of which she now stood accused, she was certainly no responsibility of his. And, as his aunt observed, it wasn't as though he were in love with her. But, when a man in the club talked unpleasantly about Miss Baring, Sir John, who never made scenes except between eight-thirty and eleven, stalked angrily out of the room.
He scarcely understood his own interest in the case. It was a fact, however: and Sir John Saumerez was a man of action, fond of making large gestures. So he determined to save Martella Baring if he could.

319 pages ; 23 cm

2023-06-28