On 22 June 1931, Lieutenant Hugh Chevis and Frances, his bride of six months, sat down to dinner as usual at their bungalow at Deepcut Barracks. Within an hour, Chevis was showing signs of strychnine poisoning and by the next morning he was dead. Thus began one of the most intriguing unsolved murder enquiries of the twentieth century — soon to become known as ' The Case of the Poisoned Partridge'. When a mysterious telegram arrived from Dublin on the day of Hugh's funeral, containing the words 'HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY', the Surrey Police found themselves at the centre of an international investigation, considering clues from Eire, India and the Far East. Suspicion also fell on those closer to home. Was it possible to break the alibi provided by Major Jackson, Frances Chevis's former husband? And what of the enigmatic Frances herself? Featuring previously unpublished material, this book provides the definitive account of the Poisoned Partridge Case.

On June 22, 1931, Lieutenant Hugh Chevis and Frances, his bride of six months, sat down to dinner as usual at their bungalow at Deepcut Barracks. Within an hour, Chevis was showing signs of strychnine poisoning, and by the next morning he was dead. Thus began one of the most intriguing unsolved murder enquiries of the twentieth century--soon to become known as "The Case of the Poisoned Partridge." When a mysterious telegram arrived from Dublin on the day of Hugh's funeral, containing the words "HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY," the Surrey Police found themselves at the center of an international investigation, considering clues from Eire, India, and the Far East. Suspicion also fell on those closer to home. Was it possible to break the alibi provided by Major Jackson, Frances' former husband? And what of the enigmatic Frances herself? Featuring previously unpublished material, this book provides the definitive account of the Case of the Poisoned Partridge.

In suburban Croydon over a period of ten months during 1928-9, three members of the same family died suddenly. A complex police investigation followed, but no charges were ever brought and the mystery remains officially unsolved. In the eighty years which followed, the finger of suspicion has been pointed at one member of the family after another: now, using the original police files and other contemporary documents, Diane Janes meticulously reconstructs these astonishing events and offers a new solution to an old murder mystery.

Amateur sleuths Frances Black and Tom Dod return to investigate a trio of deaths in a sleepy English village in the second of an intriguing new historical mystery series. Tom Dod’s Aunt Hetty is worried – three sudden deaths have occurred in the sleepy village of Durley Dean. They might seem like tragic accidents, but Aunt Hetty isn’t so sure. After all, all three took a stand against Reverend Pinder, the new vicar of St Agnes Church, whose controversial changes have divided the congregation. But is there really a killer among the parishioners? And while Fran leaps at the chance to spend a weekend at Aunt Hetty’s sleuthing with Tom, could the trip prove to be a poisoned chalice in more ways than one?

Arsenic is rightly infamous as the poison of choice for Victorian murderers. Yet the great majority of fatalities from arsenic in the nineteenth century came not from intentional poisoning, but from accident. Kept in many homes for the purpose of poisoning rats, the white powder was easily mistaken for sugar or flour and often incorporated into the family dinner. It was also widely present in green dyes, used to tint everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing (it was arsenic in old lace that was the danger). Whether at home amidst arsenical curtains and wallpapers, at work manufacturing these products, or at play swirling about the papered, curtained ballroom in arsenical gowns and gloves, no one was beyond the poison's reach. Drawing on the medical, legal, and popular literature of the time, The Arsenic Century paints a vivid picture of its wide-ranging and insidious presence in Victorian daily life, weaving together the history of its emergence as a nearly inescapable household hazard with the sordid story of its frequent employment as a tool of murder and suicide. And ultimately, as the final chapter suggests, arsenic in Victorian Britain was very much the pilot episode for a series of environmental poisoning dramas that grew ever more common during the twentieth century and still has no end in sight.