A country house murder, artistic insight and the post-war reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel. Agatha Troy, world famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.

The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in - in the person of Troy’s long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn…