FALSE ACCOUNT

Employment agency owner Bea
Abbot (False Pride, 2018, etc.) struggles to help a client who doesn’t
really know what she wants.

Marcia Tredgold’s request seems straightforward enough at first.
She’d like the Abbot Domestic Agency to find replacements for several domestic
workers who recently left the wealthy widow’s household. Since Bea has long
lists of cooks, cleaners, and chauffeurs in need of good positions, she seems
well enough positioned to help with Ms. Tredgold’s staffing needs, although she
does think it odd that her client found it necessary to dismiss a cook for
nicking a valuable watch shortly after firing a cleaner for filching a diamond
ring. Still odder is Ms. Tredgold’s insistence that what she really wants is to
find out who killed her two cats. An evening spent with Kit Crossley, the fired
cook, doesn’t do much to clarify what’s going on in the Tredgold household,
although it does leave Bea and her ex-husband, Piers, in possession of a lovely
fish pie. Nor does the horizon become any clearer when Bea gets a phone call
from Piers telling her that Marcia’s left the family mansion and fled to an
apartment she’d prepared for herself in the Docklands in case she found herself
imperiled by her three predatory adult children. The script keeps getting
zanier and zanier without giving Bea any surer sense of purpose. It’s not clear
that she’ll ever figure out what’s up with the Tredgolds, although a suicide,
incidents of domestic abuse, and an acid attack finally persuade her that
whatever the real story is, it’s probably not good.

The What the Butler Saw of
cozies, though not nearly so funny.