Brazen Tongue by Gladys Mitchell

The war had begun, and strange things were happening in the village of Willington. A group of young boys who had been sent for safety from London were playing near the cistern which held water to put out fires from the bombing. One of them dove in and found a body of a woman wearing a nightgown. On the evening before this, a young couple had gone to the cinema. They got caught in the rain on their way home and found refuge in a doorway where they also found a dead body. On that evening, Sally Lestrange went to her duty as a telephonist at the Town Hall Report Center. That night, Lillie Fletcher, who was working at the Report Canter, was murdered outside of the Town Hall building.

Thus, the local police were confronted with the poisoning by arsenic of town Councillor Blackburn- Smith, the death by beating of a young woman, Lillie Fletcher, and the drowning of a woman whose identity they could not establish. Mrs. Bradley, psychologist and amateur detective, was drawn into looking for the solution of these crimes because her niece, Sally Lestrade, was working at the Report Center on the night Lillie was killed. Also Sally was good friends with a Patricia Mort who was a reporter for the local paper. Mrs. Bradley and George, her chauffeur,  set out to solve the mystery. Gasoline rationing was not a problem for George because he had quite a skill in siphoning gasoline from other people's cars.

It was Mrs. Bradley's belief that the three crimes were related even though it was not apparent what the connection between the three people could possibly be. Also since the murders had been carried out in 12 hours on the same day, could one person have done all three.  It is also quite a puzzling mystery because the people who had motives for committing the crimes could not have done them. This book is an interesting look at the citizens of a village, and how their lives were impacted by rationing, black outs, and other results of the war.