The prize marrow judge is dead in the tea tent, and the whole village had a reason.
Every August the village of Mapleford holds its summer fête: bunting, a tombola, a dog show and the fiercely contested Giant Vegetable competition. This year the vegetable judge, a retired colonel nobody much liked, is found slumped in the tea tent with a cup of Earl Grey and no pulse, an hour before the results. The police are stuck behind a tractor on the Ashby road. Five villagers with keen eyes, long memories and a few things to hide decide they had better get to the bottom of it first.
5 roles. You take one; your friends take the rest, and the narrator plays any left over. Anyone can bring a character of their own into a role instead.
A retired Scotland Yard detective inspector who moved to Mapleford for the peace and quiet and has been bored senseless for three years.
The churchwarden and chair of the fête committee, who has run every village event for twenty years and considers a murder at hers a personal insult.
The village postmistress, who has sorted Mapleford's letters for a quarter of a century and has never once, officially, read one.
The manor's head gardener and four-time Giant Marrow champion, who was set to win a fifth until the judge died.
A cheerful Londoner who bought the old mill house in the spring and has thrown herself into village life with alarming enthusiasm.