cover:
She lay on her bed. Florence, tight-mouthed, put wet pads on her eyes and applied a layer of green astringent paste.

"The stuff is stinging me," Miss Bellamy muttered with difficulty. Florence completed the mask. Miss Bellamy attempted to say, "All right, you can go to hell and sulk there!" She heard Florence go out of the room.

Ten minutes later Florence returned and looked down on the greenish, blinded face. But Miss Bellamy was not yet dead.

The birthday party which Mary Bellamy gave each year had become an occasion when great names and glittering personalities displayed their affection and paid their homage to the brightest star of the British stage. But on this birthday (it was her fiftieth, though few knew it) everything went wrong. She quarrelled with her husband, her servants and the intimate friends who came with gifts but who also brought news of disloyalty and betrayal. Mary Bellamy needed all her acting ability to disguise the rage in her heart... Then the twisted corpse, discovered in the course of the evening, brought a disastrous day to its climax.

Given to a freecycler in need of reading matter.