TS Eliot may have modelled his sombre drama on Greek tragedy, but for all the blank verse, Agatha Christie is in there too. This is the 1930s: a bunch of useless relatives are assembled in a decaying country house, with servants, a doctor and even a puffing policeman on hand.

It is a homecoming for young Lord Harry Monchensey (Samuel West) and a birthday party for his indomitable mother (Gemma Jones). Both have a secret, but Harry blurts out his first: he is pursued by the furies of guilt because he thinks he has murdered his wife. Thriller readers will know that this revelation comes too soon to be the real one. Jeremy Herrin’s skilfully crafted production uncovers the true mystery, which Eliot says is not one of “crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation”. Since this morality play masquerades as a thriller, it would be unfair to give the ending away, but Herrin’s masterstroke is to cast Harry’s pursuing ghosts as three little boys. They are revenants of himself and his two brothers, witnesses to the primal scene of the failure of their parents’ marriage, and of Lady Monchensey and her sister’s dreadful secret. Penelope Wilton brings great authority to the role of the sister, and a fine cast, including Una Stubbs, Anna Carteret, William Gaunt, Paul Shelley, Hattie Morahan, Kevin McMonagle and Christopher Benjamin, give what at times sounds like a rehearsal for Eliot’s Four Quartets all the satisfaction of a West End whodunit.

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