Fethering sleuths Carole and Jude return in a wonderful mystery of bitter rivalries and deep-rooted jealousies Bracketts, an Elizabethan house near the town of Fethering, is about to be turned into a museum. Once the home of celebrated poet Esmund Chadleigh, it has now been decided that it should become a shrine to his life and poetry. But the transition from house to museum is running far from smoothly. For a sudden discovery is made: Buried in the kitchen garden is a human skeleton.
Strait-laced Carole and her laid back neighbour Jude return in the second of Simon Brett's Fethering Series. It wasn't the rain that upset during Carole Seddon during her walk on the West Sussex Downs. It wasn't the dilapidated barn in which she took shelter. No, what upset her was the human skeleton she discovered there... So begins the second investigation for Carole and her neighbour Jude. This time their enquires take them away from Fethering to the small hamlet of Weldisham.
Very little disturbs the ordered calm of Fethering, a self-contained retirement settlement on England's southern coast. Which is precisely why Carole Seddon has chosen to reside there. So the last thing Carole expects to encounter in Fethering is a new neighbour with but one name and an obviously colourful past. 'Jude' was not really Fethering . . . but neither was the body Carole found on the beach. A body, it has to be said, that has disappeared by the time the police arrive. Only Jude is ready to believe what her neighbour says she saw...
