Before she could touch him she saw it—the handle of a weapon sticking out between his shoulder-blades.

Playwright Martin Pitt’s acclaimed new play, The Lily Flower, is having its London premiere. When the curtain rises, in attendance are the lovely Julia Dallas; Lord Charles Kulligrew; absent-minded professor Edward Milk and his opinionated spinster sister, Agatha; and Julia’s friend Benvenuto Brown, the accomplished artist and amateur sleuth. Before the evening is through, rave notices for the play will have to sit beside the reports of a grisly murder which takes place during the performance itself. Benvenuto Brown’s investigation will take him far beyond theatre-land, to France and the suspected lair of an assassin …

What Dread Hand? was originally published in 1932.