GUILT AT THE GARAGE

Wary readers can add Shefford’s Garage to the list of places where things can go fatally wrong in the amber-preserved village of Fethering.

Carole Seddon may have been a well-informed functionary of the Home Office, but she doesn’t know a thing about cars. So when some vandal smashes the rear window of her Renault as she’s enjoying a dinner at the local pub with healer Jude Nicholls, her friend and frequent partner in criminal investigation, she takes it to Bill Shefford and asks him to fix it. He recommends a glass-replacement specialist who turns out not to be on the list of specialists Carole’s insurer will reimburse, but since Carole’s “fear of doing something wrong was not as strong as her fear of drawing attention to herself,” she burns the threatening follow-up note someone has left and pays for the repair herself. When Bill, working in a maintenance pit, is crushed to death by a gear box that falls out of Tom Kendrick’s Triumph Tr6, Carole’s recent experience makes her especially keen on working out who might have helped the unlikely weapon on its way. Malee Shefford, the Thai bride Bill wed less than a year ago? Billy Shefford, his son and heir-no-longer-quite-so-apparent? Listless, depressive Tom, who’s kept afloat by his mother, Natalie? Jeremiah, the newly arrived healer who wants to join the uninterested Jude in opening a center for alternative healing and who briefly treated Tom before Natalie invited Jude to take on the unappetizing task? The thief who made off with Bill’s will and his appointments diary? Or Carole’s anonymous correspondent, who keeps sending her threatening notes?

Very few guilty feelings around this garage but lots of quietly guilty behavior.