The play introduces the inept and bungling Inspector Pratt, who battles against the odds and his own incompetence to solve the murder of the house's owner. Bunting the butler, an English Colonel with the prerequisite stiff upper lip, a shady French art dealer and his moll, bumbling local inspectors and a well-meaning, local sleuth who seems to attract murder - they're all here, and all caught up in the side-splitting antics which follow the mysterious death of the owner of a country manor house. It soon becomes clear that the murderer isn't finished yet; but will the murderer be unmasked before everyone else has met their doom, or will audiences die laughing first?