'You must admit I make a good murderer. Nobody thinks of me.'

Not every woman can collect her dethroned lovers and their wives into one room, but then Claribel was not 'every woman'. Things happened at her parties and so one swallowed the latest bait and joined all the other poor fish. But having given her party, having collected her bevy of expectant friends, having presented three mysterious beauties, it was painfully bad tactics to make them play a murder game. All sorts of curious things were liable to happen when one let loose such a motley throng in a darkened house. So it was Claribel's fault, and she had only herself to blame when things did happen. A fairy tale with a sting in its tail.

Mary Fitt was the pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman (1897–1959), a classical scholar who taught Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff. Beginning in 1937, Freeman wrote twenty-nine mysteries and a number of short stories as Mary Fitt, and was elected to the Detection Club in 1950. Aside from her detective novels, Freeman published many books on classical Greece, scholarly articles and children's stories. She lived in St Mellons in Wales with her partner Dr Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet, a family physician and author.