Murder Comes To Call

This fourth installment in Ellicott’s post–World War I “Beryl and Edwina” series (after Murder Cuts the Mustard) finds the ladies investigating a string of burglaries in the English village of Walmsley Parva. British Edwina and her girlhood friend Beryl, an American adventuress, are now living together in Edwina’s family home, and have formed their own enquiry agency. While awaiting her turn in front of the local magistrate for speeding, Beryl meets a young Irishman receiving punishment for public drunkenness. Distrust of the Irish has led the villagers to assume Declan O’Shea is responsible for a recent rash of burglaries. When the magistrate is found dead by Beryl and Edwina, suspicions zero in on the young man. The begin quietly looking into the burglaries, but are then officially pulled into the investigation when the town’s census forms go missing. Convinced there is a connection among the incidents, they set out to clear the young man, while looking for the missing census forms and solving the magistrate’s murder.