Murder by Telegram: A 1950s Cotswold Village Cosy Mystery Novella (The Little Fennington Mysteries)

A telegram brings a father the worst news of his life. The telegram is a lie and by the time anyone knows it, the father is dead. Little Fennington, September 1952. The harvest is in, tea is still on the ration, and the whole Cotswold village has squeezed into the Memorial Hall for the harvest supper. Peggy Ashdown, who runs the village shop and post office, carries a telegram to a farmer whose only son is doing his National Service in Korea. Within the hour, the farmer is dead. The doctor says it was his heart. The village says the War Office must have made a mistake. But Peggy wrote that telegram down with her own hand, and the line above the message tells her it never came from the War Office at all. Somebody in Little Fennington sent it, knowing exactly what it would do. With her blunt best friend, the district nurse, Peggy sets out to find who turned her post office into a weapon, without giving away what passes over her counter. Murder by Telegram is the prequel novella to The Little Fennington Mysteries: a complete, fair-play village mystery with a black cat called Penny Black, gentle humour, and no gore or bad language. For readers who enjoy Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and James Runcie's Grantchester mysteries. Peggy's first full-length case is Murder at the Village Post Office.