Murder ensues when two worlds collide in Victorian Brighton. In one corner is the terribly, terribly, British household of the Sutton family, ruled by heart of stone, God-fearing stickler of a father, Mervyn Johns, where things are 'jolly nice', or 'jolly beastly', the maid gets one afternoon off a month, and the uniformly wet offspring do as they are told or will suffer the consequences. On the whole, the Suttons are jolly dull, but more interesting possibilities are found in the Dolphin pub, home of gin-swilling loose women, men on the make, and a violent drunkard of a landlord who beats his flighty wife, Googie Withers. Into this alternative world strays the Sutton's eldest son, Gordon Jackson, the Scottish wing of the family, who, deterred from his pursuit of love and poetry by Victorian parent, takes pity on Googie, and inadvertently tells her how to poison her husband using strychnine available from the family pharmacy shop. Once the deed is done, Googie tries to implicate poor old Gordon Jackson to save her own skin, but Sutton Senior comes good, driving Googie to suicide on a clifftop on Brighton seafront that no-one else knew existed. Dated, very slow in places, and a rushed ending.
