 Jessica comes to the rescue of her friend, actress Glenda Highsmith, who is mounting a play in Martin Kramers London theater based on a Fletcher-mystery in a defective adaptation by the in principle uncooperative dramatist Mae Shaughnessy with her younger house-mate Brett Dillon. Jessica and others get strange calls from Empire magazine reporter Malcolm Brooker about an affair between Glenda and John Camden, the 17th earl Glenhaven. The actors have their own bothers- waning glory Lawson Childress is drinking a bit much, worrying about Glenda; rising start Franklin Smith fears he is to be replaced and his girlfriend Sally Briggs is told it would take her pleasing Kramer more intimately the she s prepared to do. Director Peter Drew tells Jessica Glenda can t concentrate because of Kramer who is called by phone to the props basement and stabbed to death. Stage manager Oliver Hopkins finds him; Scotland Yards Detective Chief Inspector Ellen Jarvis investigates. Her friend tells Jessica and Glenda confirms her the earl Glenhaven is actual her former youth love, then a grenadier, now dying and the unknowing father of Brett, who she gave up for adoption. Jarvis says Brooker is no reporter but just a  grifter  (petty crook) and paid by Kramer; he tells Jessica he saw a blond woman go in after Martin, wearing a white raincoat like Glenda in the play, but ran from the police. Glenda is arrested and admits she was there, only in another raincoat. The disappearance of the white raincoat from props inspires Jessica to solve the murder ...