A producer Gielgud worked with was Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont; I wonder if John Terry is a reference to Ellen Terry. There was something very precious about the way that rail travel allowed you to see the landscape, she thought. You know, I often think that for all the nonsense these racing pundits talk, I could get a job doing it myself,’ she said. Another issue I wasn’t convinced by (and which I’ve noticed other reviewers have highlighted) is her treatment of the gay characters. There had, thank God, been no repeat of the snow wreaths and roaring winds which had brought the Highland railway to a sudden standstill the year before, leaving her and many others stranded in waiting rooms overnight.

Just had to check and it was all to do with Arthur being murdered while on active duty because he had an affair with his commander’s wife (nasty man, very abusive, characteristics passed on to the sone who went about murdering anyone vaguely connected.The comment was uncharacteristic of his sergeant, who usually had a more positive view of human nature despite years of experience to the contrary. When war broke out, a year later almost to the day, the world changed forever but–for her at least–that particular bond to a different age had stayed the same, and perhaps always would.

I wasn’t totally comfortable with using a real author as a fictional character, but maybe if it pushed a few people towards her books it wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

The novel's backdrop is the hit of the 1934 West End season: Tey's Richard of Bordeaux, a success so considerable that groups of supporters attended multiple performances and - one of many striking period details - souvenir dolls of the characters were marketed. On board, she meets a young woman, Elspeth Simmons, the adopted daughter of hatmakers from Berwick-upon-Tweed. I found it substantial, like a five course meal, appetizers,soup, salad, entree and dessert, the story delivered to the table and absorbed by the reader, bite by bite, detail by detail, carried by the characters, themselves highly believable and compelling. Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to the play, and that Tey herself is in danger of becoming a victim of her own success. Instead, she was met by a testament to the long wait ahead: the carriages were in darkness; the engine itself gravely silent; and a mountain of luggage built steadily along the cold, grey strand of platform.

Upson has had the wonderful idea of creating a detective novel in which the central character is Tey herself, with the setting being London's theatreland during the closing weeks of the West End run of her phenomenally successful play Richard of Bordeaux. As the train slowed its speed still further and ran into a deep cutting, the dwindling daylight vanished altogether. For a start, Tey’s life is still very recent to start using her as a character in fiction, and people in her life and plays (like Gielgud, who made his name in “Richard of Bordeaux”) still seem very recently alive to me – not enough time has elapsed. Little is known about the 'real' Josephine Tey – which is actually one of the pen names of Elizabeth Mackintosh – but fans of her crime fiction will find the fictional Miss Tey convincing.What's particularly impressive is that this is a work of fiction but inspired by real people and events thus leaving Nicola Upson little room for manoeuvre. Still,’ she added, a little wistfully, ‘I like to think my original parents had some theatrical blood in them somewhere.