A Knife at the Opera : An Inspector Bone Mystery

When Superintendent Robert Bone attends an amateur opera performance at Haddon House, his daughter Charlotte’s school, he imagines he’s finished with work for the day. But when at the end of the evening the pretty and ambitious English teacher, Claire ‘Sugar Plum’ Fairlie, is found in the Domestic Science room, where a knife has been firmly and terminally buried in her back, Bone finds himself launching a murder inquiry.
The prime suspect has to be Mr Sharpe, who was found with the body; he has made no secret of his infatuation with Claire and admits she had lately rejected him. But Bone is convinced that Sharpe is innocent and, as one suspect after another starts to emerge, he begins to wonder just how many enemies the popular Miss Fairlie actually had. Yet only when another teacher, the charming Grizel Shaw, draws Bone’s attention to some inexplicable behaviour does the light begin to dawn...