The Barnaby couple volunteers to help out at trade tycoon and presumptuous director Harold Winstanley's local amateur theatre production of Amadeus, where lead actor Esslyn Carmichael, an arrogant accountant paying 'murderer' Salieri, cuts his own throat fatally at the premiere, ignoring the protective tape was removed from the prop knife; Esslyn dumped first wife Rosa to marry Kitty, who expects a child that may even be her new lovers's, both women being on cast. The lead now falls to Cully's knavish friend Nicholas Bentley, who gets room and board to help out at a gay couple's book shop. Shortly before, Esslyn's eccentric cousin Agnes Gray was beaten to death with an iron bar and dumped in the lake, but her fortune goes to animal charities. Barnaby can only solve the cases by linking them to art thefts.
—KGF Vissers