Death at Greenway

In 1941, Bridey Kelly is a nurse trainee in disgrace, and she takes a post at Greenway House on the River Dart in Devon hoping to start over. The estate is the real wartime home of Agatha Christie, and it now houses a nursery for children evacuated from the London Blitz.

Bridey is there to help look after ten young evacuees. Her fellow nurse, Gigi, is guarded and hard to read, and neither woman offers much about her past.

As Bridey learns the routines of the house, she takes in its restricted rooms, the gossip of the nearby village and the pinch of wartime rationing. She also notices details that other people overlook.

Then a body washes up on the riverbank. The death is no casualty of the war: someone killed this person on purpose. As the investigation tightens around the estate, the secrets both nurses have kept begin to come to light.

The book is a historical mystery in the manner of a classic whodunit, with an atmospheric country-house setting and real home-front history behind it. It took the Agatha Award in the Best Historical Novel category and was also a Macavity Award finalist.