Enter Sir John

by Clemence Dane, Helen de Guerry Simpson

Fiction, mystery & detective, general

3.0

Open Library

About this book

When Sir John Saumerez, the famous actor-manager, told an aspiring young actress, called Martella Baring, to go and get a couple of years' experience in provincial rep., he couldn't have known that this cliché-advice would bring her into the shadow of the gallows. Whether or not she had committed the murder of which she now stood accused, she was certainly no responsibility of his. And, as his aunt observed, it wasn't as though he were in love with her. But, when a man in the club talked unpleasantly about Miss Baring, Sir John, who never made scenes except between eight-thirty and eleven, stalked angrily out of the room. He scarcely understood his own interest in the case. It was a fact, however: and Sir John Saumerez was a man of action, fond of making large gestures. So he determined to save Martella Baring if he could.

Themes & subjects

Fiction, mystery & detective, general

Setting

1920s

About the authors

Clemence Dane

21 February 1888 – 28 March 1965

Clemence Dane's real name was Winifred Ashton. She was born in London in 1888. At the age of 16 she went to Geneva to teach French. Later she studied art at the Slade School and in Dresden, taught again in Ireland, and then went on the stage, where for five years she acted under the name "Diana Curtis." She borrowed her nom de plume from the church of St. Clement Danes. Her first book, published in 1917, was the famous *Regiment of Women*. She followed it with *Legend*, which became a very successful play. Her later novels include *Wandering Star*, *He Brings Great News* and *The Flower Girls*. She collaborated with <a href=https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL2313252A/Helen_de_Guerry_S…

Helen de Guerry Simpson

1 December 1897 – 14 October 1940

Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940), writer, was born on 1 December 1897 in Sydney, fourth and youngest child of native-born parents Edward Percy Simpson, solicitor, and his wife Anna Maria Alexandra Guerry, daughter of the French Marquis de Guerry de Lauret. Helen grew up at her father's home, St Mervyn's, Point Piper. Her parents separated and her Catholic mother moved to London. Her father, an Anglican, sent her as a boarder to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Rose Bay, and to Abbotsleigh. Arriving in England in April 1914, Helen joined her mother. She went to Oxford in September 1915, joining the Society of Oxford Home Students (later St Anne's College), and read French at the univers…