Ngaio Marsh

On April Fool's Day the body of Mr Cartell is found in a ditch. Why was a letter of condolence sent before the body was found and what were the family squabbles all about?

Sir Hubert Handesley's extravagant weekend house-parties are deservedly famous for his exciting Murder Game, but when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have skilful alibis - so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit…

A collection of the BBC's dramatisations of Ngaio Marsh's most famous sleuth: Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn. This collection would include the following works by Ngaio Marsh: A Man Lay Dead - The gentleman detective tackles a country house party murder. A Surfeit of Lampreys - Gentleman sleuth Inspector Alleyn probes a grisly death of the head of a spendthrift aristocratic family. Opening Night - When a leading actor is found gassed in his dressing room it looks like suicide. But it transpires he was so detested that everyone had a motive for his murder. When In Rome - 1970s Rome. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn is incognito and on the trail of a vast drugs syndicate - and some exceptionally unsavoury blackmail. But he hasn't reckoned on murder.

From the leading lady's liaison to the harassment of an aging juvenile lead -- there's never a dull moment at the Vulcan Theatre. But vanity and hysterics, suspicion, jealousy and superstition are 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.