- A man who loves games and theater invites his wife's lover to meet him, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results.
- Andrew Wyke is a famous and successful author of detective novels. Milo Tindle comes to him with a strange request, that Mr Wyke divorce his wife so that Tindle can marry her. Mr Wyke is not particularly perturbed by this, he and his wife have drifted apart, and he is having an affair with another woman anyway, but uses the meeting and Mr Tindle's request as a chance to play a game, a game with potentially deadly consequences.—grantss
- Milo Tindle and Andrew Wyke have something in common, Andrew's wife. In an attempt to find a way out of this without costing Andrew a fortune in alimony, he suggests Milo pretend to rob his house and let him claim the insurance on the stolen jewelry. The problem is that they don't really like each other and each cannot avoid the zinger on the other. The plot has many shifts in which the advantage shifts between Milo and Andrew.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
- In England, the Italian English hairdresser Milo Tindle is invited by the successful writer of detective stories Andrew Wyke to visit his isolated house. The lower class Milo is the lover of Andrew's wife, who is used to have a comfortable life, and he intends to marry her. Andrew proposes Milo to steal his jewelry simulating a burglary. Milo would make a fortune selling the jewels to an intermediary; and Andrew would be reimbursed by the insurance company and would not pay alimony.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Andrew Wyke is a wealthy, unhappily married country squire and writer of detective novels who delights in playing elaborate games. Aware that Milo Tindle, the struggling owner of two hair salons, is having an affair with his wife, Marguerite, Wyke invites him to his country manor house in Wiltshire. Wyke is also having an affair with a girl named Teija and is quite happy to divorce his wife. His main concern is that Tindle, a struggling businessman, will be unable to maintain Marguerite in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed, and that she'll leave him and return to Wyke.
Wyke suggests that Tindle steal some valuable jewelry and sell it in order to live happily with Marguerite, while Wyke will claim the insurance in order to live happily with Teija. When Tindle agrees, Wyke offers him a disguise in case of unexpected visitors and, dressed up as a clown and under Wyke's supervision, Tindle breaks into Wyke's manor house, blows open the safe and obtains the jewels.
Wyke then reveals that he has lured Tindle into a trap whereupon he can legally shoot him as an intruder.
Wyke's real grievance is that his wife has been having an affair with a working-class boy made good rather than a member of the upper classes like himself (Tindle's Italian origins make him even worse in Wyke's eyes). He looks upon Tindle as nothing more than a gigolo, "a jumped-up pantry boy who doesn't know his place". While Tindle begs for mercy, Wyke fires the gun and he falls to the floor.
Two days later, in the evening, the eccentric but methodical Inspector Doppler comes to Wyke's house, announcing that he is investigating Tindle's disappearance. At first Wyke denies ever having had anything to do with Tindle but eventually admits to his meeting with him and the "game" they played involving the jewels. Wyke states that he did not really kill Tindle but had used blank bullets. His aim was to humiliate the man and teach him that becoming a member of the gentry requires breeding rather than just joining in. He maintains that, after recovering from the shock, Tindle left the house alive.
In the course of searching the house, however, Doppler finds traces of blood, evidence of actual bullets being fired into the walls and Tindle's clothes in a wardrobe. Wyke panics at this stage and tries to get away when Doppler pins him down and reveals himself to be none other than Tindle in disguise.
Tindle reveals that he wanted revenge for the way Wyke had humiliated him. Wyke expresses admiration for the way it was done, but Tindle is not prepared to leave it at that. For him, the whole charade has become something of a class struggle: Wyke's gentrified world plays games for amusement; but in Tindle's working-class world the game is a daily struggle for survival. He has therefore set up a new game, this time based on reality, and involving a real-life murder.
Wyke's murder mystery novels revolve around an upper-class detective, St. John Lord Merridew, who has a "nose for smelling out evil superior to anything in the force". Merridew is always solving cases that leave the official detectives baffled. Tindle has always rejected this image, seeing the police as sharp-eyed professionals who know their job.
Tindle tells Wyke that he met Wyke's mistress Teija. He killed her, buried her body and planted evidence around the house that would frame Wyke for the crime. Tindle further reveals that the evidence for Teija's murder is set to look as though Wyke had set it in plain sight to provoke the police; to incite them with the impression that Wyke holds a belief that the police are unintelligent and useless and will not see the evidence for what it is.
When Wyke phones Teija's roommate Joyce she confirms that Teija's body has been found and that the police are on their way to question him.
A distraught Wyke has thirteen minutes to find and destroy the proof linking him to Teija's murder before the police, led by the all-too-real Detective Sergeant Tarrant, arrive. Tindle reads out riddle-clues to the location and nature of the hidden evidence while Wyke frantically runs around the house, interpreting the riddles and finding the items.
After Wyke barely manages to dispose of the evidence in time, Tindle reveals that the police are not actually on their way; the whole thing was a set-up. He further reveals that Teija is alive, that he knows she is only marginally involved with Wyke, and that she wholeheartedly approved of Tindle's plan to humiliate the unpleasant older man, who is impotent.
Tindle then goes upstairs to retrieve Marguerite's fur coat, a sign that she is moving in with him for good. Wyke takes his revolver out of a nearby drawer. Having been humiliated himself, Wyke informs Tindle that he cannot let him leave and that he intends to kill him, this time for real.
Tindle then tells him that he actually did go to the police in order to make a complaint about the earlier incident but that they are unlikely to do anything since they see him as "some common little git who's been screwing the wife of a local nob and who got what he deserved." However, if Wyke does kill Tindle, the police will now not believe that Tindle was there to rob the house. Wyke does not believe that Tindle talked to the police and shoots him through the torso.
Within a few moments, a police car, with lights flashing, reaches Wyke's front door, and someone begins to knock. Wyke tries to retreat away from the window to avoid being seen, while Tindle, bleeding profusely and barely able to crawl, grabs the switch wired to the entirety of Wyke's large collection of mechanical toys, which come violently to life and attract the attention of the police. With his world coming down, Wyke realizes that he is ruined and the dying Tindle laughs and says mockingly, "Andrew... be sure and tell them... it was only a bloody game."
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