Death in Disguise

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No one in the village of Compton Dando was surprised to hear of the murder up at the Manor House. They were a funny lot up there. A most peculiar lot. Weird.

Mr and Mrs Bulstrode were almost the only locals to have a thread of contact with the spiritual community (so called) in the big house. She pushed the parish magazine determinedly through the letter box once a month. He delivered a single daily pint of milk. The tenuousness of this connection in no way undermined the couple’s standing as a source of much juicily informative gossip. Now, of course, they were in even more demand and Mrs Bulstrode found herself facing a full house every time she put foot to pavement outside her front door.

Demurring at first: ‘I know no more than I did yesterday Mrs Oxtoby ...’, the temptation to embroider and expand proved irresistible. And by the evening of the third day if the inhabitants of ‘The Lodge of the Golden Windhorse’ had come sailing over their crinkle-crankle wall on broom-sticks, the village would have been unastonished if not exactly sanguine.

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