Synopsis

In the library of Quittendon Manor, the house’s wealthy owner, Lady Cholmondley, tells a private investigator, Peregrine Villiers, she has been warned by a medium that she will be murdered during the weekend house party she is about to host.  She asks him to protect her from this terrible fate. 

When Lady Cholmondley’s relatives and guests arrive for drinks, they are revealed to be a suspicious lot, and more than one has a motive to kill the rich old lady. The domestic staff of Quittendon Manor are shown to be an equally dubious bunch, and everything seems to be pointing towards Lady Cholmondley’s imminent murder. It turns out, however, that Peregrine Villiers is the first victim. But, after he has been shot by an unseen assassin, he immediately returns to the onstage action, as a ghost. In this incarnation, none of the other characters can see or hear him. Nor does he have the power to communicate with them and prevent further murders from taking place. 

As, gradually, Lady Cholmondely’s relatives, house guests and domestic staff get killed off, each new victim joins Peregrine on the Other Side, visible to the audience, but not to the other living characters onstage. After much comic confusion, with the ghost characters commenting on the action and greeting each new arrival after his or her murder, Lady Cholmondley, whose premonitions of her own murder set the comic plot in motion, is the only character remaining alive. 

Characters