I am not discussing this any more,’ said Miss Crompton firmly, as though Martita was no older than us. We will have new ones made, of course, at the printer’s expense, for this is clearly their fault … but do we really need to remove these straight away? Robin Stevens was born in California and grew up in Oxford, England, across the road from the house where Alice of Alice in Wonderlandlived. But the Detective Society is never far away from danger, and it's clear there's trouble afoot at the Rue.

I also think that one of the characters in Romeo and Juliet will get poisoned before the play, and die in the spotlight. She had to drift across the stage at the opening of the Capulets’ party, looking beautiful, just before Romeo saw Juliet for the first time. But danger has a nasty habit of catching up with the Detective Society, and it soon becomes clear that there is trouble afoot at the Rue.The contents of the crate were bundles and bundles of programmes, and we piled them up in the corner of Miss Crompton’s chaotic office, next to groaning heaps of old play scripts, dead flowers in chipped vases, loose pens leaking ink across screeds of paper and several three-legged chairs. This was a little black door set into a red-brick wall at the back of the theatre, almost hidden until you went looking for it. Daisy was reading Enter a Murderer, and I was trying to do the crossword, but mostly doodling in the margins. Miss Crompton smiled, Martita rolled her eyes, Simon shrugged, Inigo sniffed, Lysander glared, and Annie treated everyone who came into Wardrobe to a long description of all the roses in her mother’s garden. It was very clear from the parts we had been given which one of us was the President of the Detective Society and which was her Secretary.

She comes to us fresh from her triumph in Happy Families last month at the Lyric, and this will be her first Shakespeare. Daisy and I had to leave Deepdean School for Girls (where we are fourth formers), and rush to my home in Hong Kong to mourn him. I think Hazel and Daisy will be in some very dangerous situations as they come closer to solving the crime. I have to learn plenty of lines for the Page, and I have to be ogled by a horrid old man when I’m Rosaline.

The people on this stage might all be grown-ups (or at least older than us), but the way they were chattering and clustering together was exactly like a group of Deepdean pupils at the beginning of a new term. I really liked this book because it was very interesting and every chapter was like a cliffhanger and after each one you want to know more so you keep on reading until the end. Miss Crompton looked amused and fond, Lysander looked – the polite word, I suppose, is romantic – Inigo looked annoyed, and both Simon and Martita looked furious.

Bridget would be on her way to collect us soon, but Daisy and I both wanted to watch Rose for as long as we could. I’m reading this back two years later (when incidentally I am currently reading Death In The Spotlight to catch up for Death Sets Sail) and comparing it to the actual plot.I hope that a famous detective or actor that Hazel and Daisy are fans of are in the mystery, I think it will make it really interesting to see how they work together. Around us were the enormous hulking shapes of the theatre’s boilers and generators, spiderwebbed and casting jumpy shadows behind shadows as we turned the pocket torches we always carry on them. After everyone had gone off book (which means they had learned their lines), and after the company had spent a day pacing around the stage and mumbling alarmingly at the floor (which was apparently not a mistake, but the blocking that Miss Crompton had mentioned), they all began to look up and speak their parts wonderfully. she might improvise a bit if she forgets her lines, and judging by the endings in your books, all will be well. But danger has a nasty habit of catching up with the Detective Society, and it soon becomes clear that there is trouble afoot.

Daisy sighed impatiently, but I could see she was thrilled by Aunt Lucy’s unusual lessons – particularly because they were secret. Frances is putting on a new production of Romeo and Juliet, but with the flu that’s going round this spring she keeps on losing actors. The top of the gold proscenium arch, which hides the curtains, is not really the top of the theatre. Wardrobe itself was part of our warren of pocket-small, gas-jet-heated dressing rooms on the first floor, and it was where Annie worked. Actors have got in the habit of declaiming Shakespeare as though they’re speaking nonsense poetry and not simply talking to one another.Oh, Hazel, this is why I’m still the President of the Detective Society, despite all that business in Hong Kong. I hope that there will lots of suspicion, new characters and the Junior Pinkertons helping The Detective Society.