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‘Suspicious minds’ is the second in my trilogy of ‘The Bretherton Mysteries’

Taster:
The first ‘Blooming marvellous’ introduced the villagers of Bretherton and Audrey Parsons, Leader of the ladies choir and fount of all knowledge on village matters. In this new tale we meet Audrey and her associates once more, in pursuit of the vandal whose activities threaten that bastion of rural life the late summer show!

Constable Clifford Davis was way out of his depth and he knew it!
For the fourth time since all fools day the hallowed earth of the Bretherton allotment society, a number of kitchen gardens and several small holders’ fields in the district had been desecrated by vandals and with the harvest month of August still to come, the villagers were angry.
The assembly in the little village hall was unusually belligerent as the unhappy policeman tried to address them from the stage. Unable to make himself heard Constable Davis was quickly reduced to waving his arms in a peculiar flapping action as if to press the hubbub into silence.
Nobody noticed.
And nobody noticed Audrey Parsons, small farmer, leader of the Bretherton ladies choir and fount of all knowledge on matters of village life, as she quietly mounted the stage and drew the officer into the wings.
She returned to centre stage…alone.

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The first in the Bretherton village mysteries

Taster!
A village mystery! Emma Brigham has not been seen for sometime. Some believe she has been the victim of a dreadful murder and the St Bretherton ladies choir are convinced that they know the perpetrator! 3500 words previously unpublished.
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The story
“She’s dead, dead and buried, and he done her in!” If Audrey Parsons was speaking out of turn on that summer evening, then she was only voicing what everybody thought.
Mr Paul Brigham had bought a small holding in the village just before Christmas. Mrs Brigham and the two children moved in at New Year and the whole village was buzzing with talk of the new family as winter gave way to springtime. New blood is always to be celebrated in a small community and the arrival of the Brighams seemed to presage the green shoots of the coming spring still sleeping in the soil.

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