Ann Purser | Suspicion at Seven

SUSPICION AT SEVEN is the latest in my Lois Meade Mystery series, and involves another murder hunt alongside Detective Inspector Hunter Cowgill. The inspiration for this story came to me one day when I was lunching in a restaurant in a converted water mill. I remembered as a child seeing the mill and all its workings and work people were covered with a layer of white. It looked then as if a gigantic flour sprinkler had dusted it ready for the oven!

During lunch, I watched the huge millwheel, glassed in for safety, an attraction for customers, going heavily round and round, dripping slimy green weed ..... A plot, surely?

One for Lois Meade, who has become friendly with Aurora Black, an attractive baker from her shop opposite the mill, and it is on a pleasant summer day that the pair decide on lunch after a walk with Jemima, Lois`s small terrier, across the water meadows.

Aurora is not entirely happily married to her husband Donald, since he has a wandering eye, and a mistress who helps him with his pyramid jewellery selling and other less innocent occupations. Aurora is also part of the business, and they have one precious daughter, Millie.

A recipe for disaster? The death of a woman in bed in the Mill Hotel is the start of a grim journey through suspicion and finally justice.

For this story, I had ready-made memories of childhood holidays with my Great Aunt Eliza in her village bakehouse in Lincolnshire. I can smell again the heavenly scent of bread baking and feel the heat of the big old stone oven!