A Kipper at Midnight

Matthew Kipper is a TV chef and amateur sleuth of dubious morality who encounters a series of dark and comic murders at a country house weekend. The guests and suspects are the most extreme, weird and morally bankrupt individuals that celebrity culture can offer.

"Beware a kipper at midnight" was a single line of printed type on a single sheet of crisp A4 that had been mailed to Lady Cynthia Bryce-Howard only a week before her annual charity house party. She tells Matthew she regards the missive as a terrible warning of trouble to come, doubtless mailed by a left-wing crackpot, intent on disrupting her yearly festival of privilege and excess. 

Can they not see that whatever scandalous events take place in the next two days, the handpicked movers and shakers will gladly give to charity as a salve to their consciences? Think of it as a "morality offset tax", paying for others to live virtuous lives, so they don't have to.