At about eight o’clock on a summer evening in their house in Kent, England, Ruth Condomine prepares for the arrival of dinner guests. Ruth, a woman in her mid-thirties, checks with her maid Edith to see about the progress in preparing drinks and dinner for the guests. Ruth gives Edith directions to move slowly while working that night. This is a struggle for Edith, who promptly hurries off when directed to get the ice.

Ruth’s husband Charles, about 40, enters. When he comments upon the lack of ice, Ruth asks him to be patient as Ruth is encouraging Edith to move more slowly. Charles supports this effort and commiserates about the loss of their previous maid, Agnes, who left to get married after getting pregnant out of wedlock.

Ruth frets about the night, worried that it is going to go poorly. Charles insists that it will be funny, even though they must be dead serious. Charles, an author, has arranged for his friends the Bradmans to come and attend a séance with Madame Arcati so he can write a book about a fraudulent medium. While the Condomines and Bradmans are skeptics, they must pretend to believe so Madame Arcati will conduct the séance.