A review by biddywink
Mrs. Jeffries and the Feast of St. Stephen by Emily Brightwell

4.0

Oh, listening to a Mrs. Jeffries mystery is so fun and soothing. In this one, the victim murdered himself. He tried killing off the remaining members of a tontine created at the 10 members' birth by their parents. Though made illegal after it was created, the tontine still existed as an annuity. The victim poisoned 4 members by gifting (hehe German joke) them a special port he imported as a cask and re-bottled to give away. When the tontine members were down to 3, including himself, he tried to off the other 2 at once. Instead, the wife of one of them played a trick on him, intending to humiliate him. She re-labeled the bottle with an expensive Bordeaux's old label and gave it to the victim as Christmas gift in return for the unwanted port gift. The idiot didn't know the difference between the port and Bordeaux, so gulped it down--not even noticing the bunch of crumbled dried leaves of foxglove in it, the ones he himself added to it! Anyway, moral of the story: don't piss off your friend's wife. But seriously, it was another enjoyable story. I am trying not to let Mrs. Jeffries increasingly frequent self-doubt to bother me. I understand that it is an easy tension-builder for plot, but this time it was fairly drawn out. I stuck with it, though, and really it wasn't so bad. And it seems like Betsy and Smythe will FINALLY get married. I'm looking forward to the next audio installment.