At the country manor house of Chaynings, the assembled guests–led by their blustery host, Alastair Bing–are ready to dine. The table boasts a respected scientist named Carstairs and an observant old psychoanalyst by the name of Bradley, but one chair remains vacant. Famed explorer Everard Mountjoy has yet to appear, and enquiries among the servants have yielded no results. Time passes and patience runs short, and Bing and a few male guests search for the absent Mountjoy. They find him in the bathtub of a second floor bathroom, dead from drowning. At least, it must be Mountjoy; and yet the body in the bath is clearly a woman’s! The police are summoned, theories are expounded, and Mrs. Bradley witnesses all with a basilisk eye. The tribulations at Chaynings, it seems, have just begun: before long, the manor house is beset by shrieks in the night, missing bathroom stools, broken clocks, attacks upon mannequin masks, and two drowning attempts. Finally, Bing’s daughter Eleanor becomes the victim of a poisoning–her body is discovered in that ominous bathtub. Inspector Boring prepares a case against the last person to see Eleanor alive, and arrests Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley for murder.

(Synopsis kindly provided by Jason Half: www.jasonhalf.com)

“This early outing for Mrs Bradley is full of surprises. Ugly she may be, but dull, never.” – The Daily Mail, 2014