by Ngaio Marsh

A London actor was dying for star billing...From the leading lady's liaison to the harassment of an aging juvenile lead-there's never a dull moment, darling, at the Vulcan Theatre. But vanity and hysterics, suspicion and superstition, brandy and jealousy, are all upstaged by a death on opening night. Was it really suicide? Or a macabre encore to a long-ago murder in the same backstage room? Scotland Yard's Inspector Alleyn sets to work assembling a cast of suspects for the final curtain.