Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

Margery Allingham was one of the Queens of the Golden Age between the wars, along with Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers. They are frequently accused of being snobs. But like E.M. Forster's Howards End, Dancers in Mourning is a book about snobbish people – mainly.

Mr Campion's friend "Uncle William" Faraday has seen his unreliable memoirs turned into a musical comedy. He's having the time of his life, until a series of petty and increasingly dangerous and disruptive practical jokes are pulled on the cast. Mr Campion is called in to help, and invited down to the star's country home, White Walls. (It seems to be deep in the Suffolk countryside, but the characters whizz up and down to London, sometimes more than once a day.)

Star of the show is a gifted dancer, Jimmy Sutane, clearly modelled on Fred Astaire. He is at the top of his game, and is producer and choreographer of "The Buffer" and a new show in production. But he confesses to Campion later that he just about breaks even. He has this vast country house full of servants, constantly stuffed with cast members and hangers-on. We hear echoes of Allingham's own life: she also had a large house in the country where people turned up and dug themselves in and flirted with her husband. He had a job, but she was the main supporter of the whole circus.

Campion is invited down for the weekend, and promptly falls in love with Linda, Mrs Sutane, who must be about 27 and now finds herself running a house that's more like a hotel. Also present are Jimmy's young sister, Eve, several members of the cast who spend most of their time rehearsing, and the composer of the shows, Squire Mercer, who lives in a cottage in the grounds. Benny Conrad, Jimmy's understudy, is an affected young man with golden curls who manages to alienate everybody.

A new cast member, Chloe Pye, has invited herself. She is somewhat past her prime, and is still performing a rather old-fashioned, risqué strip act. It's summer, and she spends the day in a white bathing-suit plus a red silk sarong and a child's sun-bonnet. She flirts with anything in trousers and refers to herself as "little Chloe", and if a man is sitting in an armchair she'll come and perch on the arm. She bosses Linda's servants and is rude to them.

Late that night she is found dead, and Jimmy may be responsible. There's an inquest, and her sister-in-law turns up. Linda invites her to the house and another awful character comes to life. Mrs Pole comes from near Wolverhampton but has added layers of gentility to her voice (Francis Matthews "does" her very well). Chloe has been found to suffer from a now-vanished diagnosis that meant that a small shock might kill her. Mrs Pole, despite her airs, doesn't know that it is not done to talk about someone's "glands" in public. Still less to go on and on about them.

Also present at this post-inquest party is a ghoulish neighbour, Mrs Geodrake, who has dropped in on the off-chance of gathering gossip fodder. She can sense that nobody likes Benny, so she teases him as a means of ingratiating herself with these glamorous theatre people.

Campion tries to bow out of a difficult situation, but as so often, the deaths begin to mount up. Jimmy eventually explains confidentially that Chloe – whom he claimed not to know – was an ex-girlfriend, and he paints a picture of their early, struggling years touring Canada. And now he's married to Linda, who is a "lady". The house is hers.

Allingham kept her menage afloat by writing popular romances and thrillers under other names, but her Mr Campion books reveal new depths on every rereading. This one benefits from the presence of Lugg, Mr C's valet and sidekick - he takes over as butler when Linda's servant gives notice, and makes a far better job of looking after her daughter than any nursemaid.

The rose-loving doctor with a stuffed wolf in his hall was a real person – Allingham bought his house. I wonder if she kept the wolf?

More on Golden Age mysteries here, and links to the rest.