Two for Sorrow

This is actually the 3rd in the Josephine Tey series by Nicola Upson, but our library let me down by not having the 2nd in the series, Angel with Two Faces. I am having a bit of a time trying to figure out how to use my iPad mini to write and post this blog, but here goes. BTW there is already a post for the first book by Upson, An Expert in Murder.
Josephine is back in London staying quietly at her professional women's club, The Cowdray, while she does research for a new book based on the true life criminals Amelia Sach and Annie Walters. Nicola Upson has done her research on the crimes and has her writer protagonist do the same.  There are a few "draft" chapters of the book interspersed with chapters in which the characters are developed and the plot moved forward. In the book,  Josephine is able to actually interview some people who were involved in various ways with the two women before they were executed in 1903 and, it turns out, she actually went to school with the daughter of Amelia Sach without having known it at the time. In fact, the book relies perhaps a bit too much on several of the characters having connections to the crime Josephine is writing about and so bringing the old crimes and the new ones together. People have changed their identities to protect themselves from the harassment that followed publicity about the murders of babies and the eventual double hanging of the two women. And there are some other surprises about who people really are.
Friend Archie gets involved initially because there have been some minor thefts and some poison pen letters sent to members of the Cowdray Club. But then, one of the seamstresses working for the Motley sisters is murdered in a most gruesome fashion and the message sent by the method suggests she was talking too much. She had also been a former petty thief jailed at the same place the baby farmers had been imprisoned, Holloway Gaol. The Motley sisters have agreed to outfit the Board of the Cowdray Club for a benefit gala so they move into the club to complete the final work, having been barred from the site of the murder, their work rooms.
There are developments along a romantic line as well. Marta resurfaces with a surprising revelation and Archie is pushed into saying things that also rock the boat for Josephine. The characters in these books are complex and there are not necessarily happy endings or tidy solutions to the problems presented by messy human relationships. But they are very well wrought, capturing the essence of post WWI London, and I will undoubtedly finish out the series.