Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

by Maureen Johnson

The village hall is a factory where petty grudges are made, and there is no grudge like a petty, hobby-related grudge. Oh, you giggled at Edith’s sonnet? Sounds like someone’s about to be found clubbed to death with a typewriter, their mouth stuffed full of poems.

On the average night, the rooms are occupied by visiting inspectors from Scotland Yard, blackmailers, people long thought dead, and people who are actually dead.

If anyone offers to show you their vat, say you need to get something from your car, start the engine, and run them over. The constable understands this sort of thing. Tell him about the vat.

A village is not its buildings or its land; sadly, a village is the sum of its people. Eliminate the people and the problem is gone. Except that the problem is largely the elimination of people.