A Disturbing Element

Christina le Bouchon arrived in Meadowbank to take up a teaching post at "Holly Lodge", a  boarding school for girls, in good time for the start of the autumn term and in less than two months her daily help discovered her dead body in the house she was renting in Market Square.

Chief Inspector Graham Ford and his team were immediately hampered by the lack of any background knowledge of the deceased, until piece by piece began to emerge, not only of the unorthodox way in which she came to be employed at "Holly Lodge", but her suspected involvement two years earlier in the South of France in the murder of Julia Armstrong. Graham's firmly entrenched distrust for coincidences was challenged when it became clear there were very strong connections with what was known as the Armstrong case, to the murder of Christina le Bouchon.  

When, two days later the body of Meadowbank's librarian was found half-buried in woodland on the outskirts of the town, local interest in the 'mysterious Frenchwoman' began to lessen as they realised a woman they all knew and respected had met such a violent end. Once again, murder had returned to their town and, once again, they felt vulnerable.

There was no shortage of suspects. And, to Graham's frustration, each of them had a motive for both murders, but his greatest problem was finding which one had taken that irreversible step: the revengeful sister; the disinherited son; the prominent politician; or someone yet to make an appearance?  

Pressured by his superintendent, "The Warrior", to bring the investigation to a speedy conclusion and being constantly stymied by Carol Cliff, the intrepid journalist singularly intent on her major scoop, the team are hard pressed to sift and sort through the evidence to find the truth behind who was responsible for what happened in what they believed should be a tranquil and uneventful market town.