Maypole Murder

About Maypole Murder

A thatched cottage. A seventeen-tab festival binder. A May Day celebration.

And a very pleasant man who turned out to be none of those things. Sheila Cooper expected to put out chairs. What she got was a three-inch binder with colour-coded tabs, a Maypole in three wrapped sections that must not be opened early, and a set of handwritten notebooks from a woman named Agnes Fielding — a retired choreographer who documented everything and had no idea how valuable the documentation would become.

The village of Wrenford is preparing for its annual May Day ceremony, and Sheila has been drafted into managing the schedule, the rehearsals, and the ribbon tension. The May Queen is kind and capable. The festival treasurer is organized and invisible.

The village runs like clockwork. Then the May Queen disappears — and a photographer is found dead — and Sheila discovers that four years of festival accounts don't add up, and the person no one ever thought about had been counting on exactly that. Max tracks through woodland.

Agnes's notebooks reveal what the spreadsheets concealed. And Sheila learns that the most dangerous person in a community is sometimes the one everyone is grateful for.