Dancers in Mourning

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Dancers in Mourning is a crime novel by Margery Allingham, first published in 1937, in the United Kingdom by Heinemann, London and in the United States by Doubleday Doran, New York; later U.S. versions used the title Who Killed Chloe?.

It is the ninth novel to star the mysterious Albert Campion, aided as usual by his butler/valet/bodyguard Magersfontein Lugg.

[edit] Plot summary

An old friend of Albert Campion has written a successful book that has been turned into a hit musical comedy. Jimmy Sutane, an established actor and dancer is the star of the musical. But recently someone has it in for Sutane and has started playing harmless practical jokes that have caused the highly emotional Jimmy much trauma. Jimmy asks Campion to look into who the prankster may be. So Campion takes a trip to the Sutane household, where he unexpectedly finds more than he bargained for.

Jimmy Sutane's house is a strange mix of the theatrical and the snobbish. And into this mix comes Chloe Pye, an overdone and melodramatic has been actress that no one seems to like. When she is accidentally run over by Jimmy Sutane in his car, no one seems upset and everyone is eager to call it an accident. But Campion is not so certain, and the more he investigates the less he desires to find out about the world of the Sutanes.

Campion must deal with high strung entertainers and his own emotions as he tries to find out if a murder even happened, and who is still playing tricks on the star and his family.

It turns out that Squire Mercer, a genius musician who lives with the Sutanes was once married to Chloe Pye. She wanted to leave him for Jimmy Sutane and he threatened to never divorce her. She told him that divorce wasn't necessary since she was still married to someone else, thereby committing bigamy with Squire Mercer. Her return to the Sutane household was to get back into the good graces of Squire Mercer so that he would fall back in love with her and support her financially. Instead he gets annoyed and angry at her advances and kills her. Then he throws her off a bridge in front of Jimmy Sutane's car so that the whole thing will look like an accident. Unfortunately Sutane's understudy has seen the whole thing and is also the playing the pranks of Sutane because he wants to play the lead role in the hit musical show. When he is killed by one of Mercer's old time criminal associates, everything is discovered by the police. Unfortunately, Campion's love for Sutane's wife clouds his judgement so that he thinks Jimmy has actually murdered both Chloe and his understudy. It is only at the end that he discovers the truth for himself.