Dancers in Mourning

Margery Allingham's Dancers in Mourning came out in 1937, from Heinemann in Britain and Doubleday Doran in the United States; some later American editions were published under a different title. Campion is making his eighth appearance in the series, and he is helped, as usual, by his servant and bodyguard Magersfontein Lugg.

The trouble begins with an old friend of Campion's, William Faraday, whose book has been adapted into a successful musical comedy. Its star is the actor and dancer Jimmy Sutane, and someone has begun playing practical jokes on him that are wearing him down; Sutane asks Campion to find out who is behind them, and Campion goes to stay with the household.

What he finds there is a mixture of the theatrical and the snobbish, and it includes Chloe Pye, a melodramatic actress past her prime whom nobody in the company seems to like. When Sutane's car runs her over there is a general willingness to call it an accident, and Campion's own investigation is the only thing standing in the way of that conclusion.