After enjoying and reviewing “Mrs. Jeffries Takes the Cake” last week, I decided to go to the beginning of the series and read the book that started it all. Today’s selection is “The Inspector and Mrs. Jeffries,” by Emily Brightwell.
When we start this book, we can see that Mrs. Jeffries has already been working for the Inspector for a while and helped him with a few cases, so this first book in the series is not the first case she ever helped him solve. However, in this book we get more of a backstory on the major characters and we see how they all came together to help the Inspector.
Mrs. Jeffries, a lonely widow woman formerly married to a police officer, heads up the household staff. For some time, she’s been sending that staff out to gather clues, thinking that they’d never guess what she was up to, but they did. Turns out they’ve known for some time that she’s helping the Inspector solve his mysteries, and they’re pleased to be a part of it. Mrs. Jeffries is quite embarrassed that her secret has been discovered, but when all the other members of the staff promise not to tell, she gets over that embarrassment and quickly organizes everyone into a lean, mean, crime solving machine. The main trick is keeping the Inspector from finding out about it. It would crush him if he knew he wasn’t as brilliant as he thought.
The mystery in this go-round is that of a murder, a poisoning, to be exact. All evidence points to a poisoned mushroom in the deceased’s soup, but a knowledgeable neighbor tells Mrs. Jeffries that a mushroom takes a couple of days to kill; it’s not instant. This sends the housekeeper down another path, investigating secret romances, blackmail, and theft, before she arrives at the correct conclusion. The murderer had been sly, for sure, but they weren’t counting on Mrs. Jeffries. She feeds the clues to the Inspector as carefully as soup, and by book’s end, the proper villain is behind bars.
What I enjoy the most about this series is the care and consideration the Inspector has for his staff and they for him. They serve him out of loyalty, not just because he pays them. Their assistance in his cases is done to keep him from looking foolish – he has done so much for them and they want to pay him back in some small way. These books are clean and enjoyable – if you’re in the mood for a good mystery, snag one today.
(This book was published by Berkeley in 1993.)
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