Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

by Maureen Johnson

It is possible that you will find yourself in a placid and tedious little corner of England; it is just as possible that you will end up in an English Murder Village. You will not know you are in a Murder Village, as they look like all other villages. When you arrive in Shrimpling or Pickles-in-the-Woods or Wombat-on-Sea or wherever it is, there will be no immediate signs of danger. This is exactly the problem. You are already in the trap.

Perhaps today you will arrive by train, that most murdery of conveyances.

THE MOST MURDERY OF CONVENIENCES.

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.

IM CRYING

The Police Station It’s just a mug of tea in a cupboard. There is only one constable, which is unfortunate, what with all the murders and everything.

Anywhere with a Vat In English Murder Villages, vats exist for the express purpose of drowning people—in beer, in pickling brine, in whiskey, in jam. This is doubly true if the vat was built by fourteenth-century monks. 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.