[2] A young man is stabbed in the back with a stiletto dagger while waiting in the queue for standing room at one of the final West End performances of a hit musical comedy starring actress and singer Ray Marcable.

Learning about the family of the landlady Mrs Everett, Grant tracks the suspect to a hideaway in Carninnish on the west coast of Scotland where her clergyman brother lives.

Here he meets Miss Dinmont, a London nurse by profession and niece of Mrs Everett and her uncle Logan, the clergyman.

After this long trip up north tracking and arresting his man, Grant begins to have doubts as he brings him back to London on a murder charge.

Sitting with Barker, Grant hears the confession of the “fat woman” from the queue, Mrs Wallis, who did kill Sorrel.

The boss wants to send her away, until Grant realises she is the mother of Ray Marcable, born Rose Markham, the star of the musical that people waited in line to see.

Either we're both going or neither of us is going.”(Chapter 18, Conclusion) Bert Sorrell had known her daughter in childhood when she was raised by her aunt and uncle Markham, and he had been in contact with her in her current stardom.

She used a knife her late first husband brought back from his sailing voyages, because she sensed Sorrel’s crazy state of mind and had to stop him.

The plot gave “solid proof for the unreliability of circumstantial evidence.” The novel gave no preparation for the ending which justified Grant’s misgivings about Lemont, yet Kirkus Reviews was pleased to have this novel, liking the writing of Josephine Tey.