Dear Little Corpses - Josephine Tey 10 - by Nicola Upson

  First Published: 2022

This was a great but heartbreaking novel.

It is 1939. Josephine and Marta are spending some time in the Suffolk cottage before Marta has to fly to America for Hitchcock's new film. The people in the village are to receive children from London as the war is imminent. One of the children is four-year-old Angie, who doesn't understand, why her mother is sending her away, and her mother, Maggie, is heartbroken.

The buses with the children are late, and when they arrive, the vicar's wife, Hilary Lampton, is dismayed to realise that there are more children than they counted on. Elsie, who owns the shop in the village, is there with her daughter and her granddaughter, Annie. The daughter Kathy is to take one girl, and Annie is not happy. Elsie suggests Annie stay with her, but Kathy says that she needs to get used to the new situation. Her mother returns to her shop, and when Kathy has to take three children instead of two, she thinks Annie should be better with her mother, so she sends her to the shop.

Then Herrons are a family who own a big house and are considered very strange. They come for the girl they are going to take in, and when Hilary tells them that they could take in the girl's brother, Noah, they refuse. So Hillary has to ask Marta and Josephine to take Noah in, and they do for a few days.

The next day there is a fete to which everybody is invited. It is then that Kathy discovers that her daughter is missing. She never got to Elsie's. Elsie and Kathy are devastated, thinking that the girl has been out overnight. There is a famous writer, Margery Allingham, who is at the fete, being a judge with Josephine. Everybody tries to help find Annie, and the firleds and forest are searched, but she is nowhere to be found.

Suspicion falls on the Herrons, especially as a neighbour, Winnie Chilber, tells Archie that she saw two girls in their car, and not just one. Archie talks to the sisters and the strange brother, but they claim that Winnie lies. Winnie has a brother, Cyril, who grows flowers, and he is helping in the search.

Then Josephine and Noah go to have tea with Margery Allingham at her home in a nearby village. When they are there, a neighbour comes to Margery, who is in charge of the evacuees, to tell her that she wants to send her girl back as she is always crying and  demanding to see her parents. When Josephine sees the girl, she realises it is Annie. Later Annie says that she picked up a label she found, and the label belonged to Angie. Annie's parents and grandmother are ecstatic to have Annie back, but Archie has to go and tell Angie's mother that her daughter is missing.

Once again Winnie accuses the Herrons and tells Archie about Edmund Herron killing a baby. Edmund then confesses, saying that he kidnapped a baby from the gypy camp because his mother was very sad after losing her baby. So he and his sister kept him in the nursery and when they heard their father, Edmund put the baby in a box. When they returned to the nursery, the baby was dead, and when his father discovered the truth, he forced him to dig the grave with his own hands in the garden. 

When the police start to dig, they find other babies, and Edmund denies knowing anything, and his sisters tell him that the behaviour of the gardener, Cyril, towards their youngest sister was suspicious. When Archie learns about this, Josephine sees Cyril leave, and she goes to check on Winnie. Nobody answers and when she decides to try the door, she finds Winnie on the floor, beaten to a pulp. The woman mentions Cyril, and a baby, and then she dies. Archie comes and Josephine tells him what Winnie told her, and the police go after Cyril in the forest, and it is there that Archie finds the body of Angie, and there is another body that belongs to her little friend, Lizzie. This is so sad a conclusion. 

Archie has to tell her mother about Angie being dead, and he knows that he will have to go and talk to the parents of Lizzie, who are blissfully ignorant.

A year later Maggie, Angie's mother, hears the alert that there is a air raid. Her sister begs her to follow her to the shelter, but Maggie tells her that she can't go on without Angie. She has tried but it is useless. So Maggie remains outside, and we suppose that the boms kill her.

This novel broke my heart. It was so, so sad. Even so, I enjoyed the novel and it was very well devised.