Dead Man's Bells

In an English village, the deadliest thing in the garden is often the kindliest hand.

Little Hemlock has never looked lovelier. It is the height of the open-garden season, and for the first time in living memory the great walled garden at Hemlock Manor is throwing wide its door — half-restored, saved from the developers' bulldozers by an army of villagers who cut and hauled and burned their way through the spring. To crown the day, a celebrated garden designer will cut the ribbon and lend her famous name to the cause. Then, on the hottest afternoon of the year, Rowena Fanshawe drops among the foxgloves with a heart that simply stops.

The county is content to blame the heat, the crowds, and a lady who would overdo it. But Dilys Ashcroft — sixty-five, lately widowed, and finding to her own surprise that she has begun to live again with soil worked deep into her cracked and labouring hands — knows foxglove by its older name: dead man's bells. She knows, too, what happens when its leaves are steeped for tea in place of comfrey, and how very alike the two plants look, growing elbow to elbow in a good English ditch.

With a developer at the gate, a village desperate for its charity day to be a triumph, and everyone longing to call the death a tragic accident, Dilys must decide whether to let a kindness lie — or prove that someone in Little Hemlock served murder with a smile.

Warm, wry, and steeped in the green scent of a real garden, Dead Man's Bells is a classic village mystery for readers who love their crimes cosy, their sleuths sharp, and their settings so vivid you can smell the tomato leaves. Cicely Marchmont writes with the sly humour of the best cottage-garden cosies and an eye for the poisons hiding in plain sight.

Some gardens hold more than flowers. Step inside — and mind what you're given to drink.