The 1930s country house party packed with crooks, cops, and the usual suspects frame the perfect scene of the crime with all the right ingredients — the theft of the fabled diamond necklace, the purloined antique pistols, the secret passage, the ravishing baroness with a past, the body in the lake... What a pretty puzzle! "Don't expect me to solve anything," Inspector Wilkins announces. But of course, he does: theft, espionage, impersonations (triple, at the very least), blackmail, murder.

The suspects include a noble host and hostess, a jewel thief and foreign agents in disguise, bright young things, mysterious mature men, a Texas millionaire, and, of course, the butler... And what does the blood-stained egg cosy have to do with anything?

Crime connoisseurs will recognize the ingredients for a zany pastiche, a delightful romp paying tribute to the past while titillating the present.