Called upon to probe the mysterious disappearance of two touring motorcoach drivers, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley uncovers a racket which involves stolen antiques, smuggling and murder. Later, a third driver is missing, but reappears to tell a tale which Dame Beatrice suspects is only partly true. But one slender clue leads to another until the drama is played out . . .Review"Mrs. Lestrange Bradley . . . is by far the best and most vital English female detective." -- The Observer (The Observer and Eccentric )

Mrs Bradley is visiting the picturesque village of Spey in search of a local witch when Gerald Conway, a junior master at Spey College, is found murdered. Despised by both pupils and peers, there is no shortage of suspects but can the redoubtable Mrs Bradley use tact, wit and just a touch of black magic to make the boys and their masters divulge the truth?

MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIESMARGERY ALLINGHAMMystery Mile Police at the Funeral Sweet Danger Flowers for the Judge The Case of the Late Pig The Fashion in Shrouds Traitor's PurseCoroner's Pidgin More Work for the Undertaker The Tiger in the Smoke The Beckoning Lady Hide My Eyes The China Governess The Mind Readers Cargo of Eagles E. F. BENSONThe Blotting BookThe Luck of the Vails NICHOLAS BLAKEA Question of ProofThou Shell of DeathThere's Trouble BrewingThe Beast Must DieThe Smiler With the KnifeMalice in WonderlandThe Case of the Abominable SnowmanMinute for...

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERYRediscover Gladys Mitchell - one of the 'Big Three' female crime fiction writers alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.Alastair Bing's guests gather around his dining table at Chaynings, a charming country manor. But one seat, belonging to the legendary explorer Everard Mountjoy, remains empty. When the other guests search the house, a body is discovered in a bath, drowned. The body is that of a woman, but could the corpse in fact be Mountjoy? A peculiar and sinister sequence of events has only just begun...This is Gladys Mitchell's first book and it marks the entrance of the inimitable Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, psychoanalyst and unorthodox amateur sleuth, into the world of detective fiction. But instead of leading the police to the murderer, she begins as their chief suspect.

Mrs Bradley is visiting the picturesque village of Spey in search of a local witch when Gerald Conway, a junior master at Spey College, is found murdered. Despised by both pupils and peers, there is no shortage of suspects but can the redoubtable Mrs Bradley use tact, wit and just a touch of black magic to make the boys and their masters divulge the truth?

MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES MARGERY ALLINGHAMMystery Mile Police at the Funeral Sweet Danger Flowers for the Judge The Case of the Late Pig The Fashion in Shrouds Traitor's PurseCoroner's Pidgin More Work for the Undertaker The Tiger in the Smoke The Beckoning Lady Hide My Eyes The China Governess The Mind Readers Cargo of Eagles E. F. BENSONThe Blotting BookThe Luck of the Vails NICHOLAS BLAKEA Question of ProofThou Shell of DeathThere's Trouble BrewingThe Beast Must DieThe Smiler With the KnifeMalice in WonderlandThe Case of the Abominable SnowmanMinute for...

When former banana-grower Edris Tidson hears of a possible sighting of a water-naid he insists that his wife, her aunt Prissie and Prissie's young ward Connie, travel with him to Winchester in search of the nymph. As tensions rise between Connie and Edris, Prissie invites part-timwe Freudian Mrs Bradley to join them and unofficially observe Edris and his growing obsession. Then two young boys are found drowned and speculation mounts that the naid is luring them to her deaths. Can Mrs Bradley unravel the mysteries hidden within the river?

Mrs. Bradley is at her devastating best, saurian perhaps but very human. _____________ Mike O'Hara is a young, handsome distance runner, working with his fellow athletes to catch his cousin, Gerry Gascoyne, in a cross-country game of hare and hounds. Playing a hunch, Mike separates from the group and soon encounters a man who tells him his quarry travelled down a lonely footpath. Instinct tells him otherwise, but Mike follows the path and is soon in unfamiliar territory. As night falls and it begins to rain, Mike stops at a solitary cottage to ask for directions. The woman at the house tells Mike she's with a very sick man who has to be taken to hospital. Mike offers to help, and is soon working with a tall stranger to move the sick man--who is bundled from head to toe in blankets--onto a makeshift stretcher and into a car. Told to hold their bundled passenger upright, Mike grows more and more uneasy of the situation and increasingly alarmed at the deathly stillness of the sick man. Uncertain of what lay ahead, Mike jumps out of the moving car and tumbles out, escaping from the strange scene. O'Hara and Gascoyne decide to tell Mike's story to Ferdinand Lestrange. The lawyer is not available, but much to the boys' luck, Ferdinand's mother is quite interested in Mike's tale. Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley is on the case, and what criminal activity she uncovers--with the help of Mike and Gerry, secretary Laura Menzies, chauffeur George, nephew Denis Bradley, and a troupe of hired film extras--centers around a circle of nine prehistoric stones called the Dancing Druids.

Marius Lovelaine has decided to extend the olive-branch and visit his estranged sister at her island-set hotel. He rallies his family together, but wife Clothilde wants nothing to do with sister or island, and opts to visit her cousin instead. Reluctantly, Marius travels to the island of Great Skua with only his grown children in tow: son Sebastian and daughter Margaret are determined to make the most of their holiday. Eliza Lovelaine (now Dashleigh) has invited them to her hotel, though rather dubiously mentioning the guest fees as she did so. Marius and family disembark from the boat, having arrived with a reptilian older lady and her Amazon-sized companion, only to be told that sister Lizzie has not returned from a trip to the mainland. Frustrated, Marius waits for her arrival, but the days pass and the tiny boat never brings the missing woman to the island. Marius does make the acquaintance of Eliza's business partner, a dour woman named Miss Crimp, who promptly annoys her guest by situating Marius at the hotel while booking his offspring into a separate chalet. An infestation of ornithologists to the island proves the last straw, but before the Lovelaines can make an exit, a birdwatcher spots the body of a woman being tossed against the rocks by a turbulent sea. Identification shows that the unfortunate woman is Eliza Dashliegh. Marius, who had hoped to reconcile with his sister partly to bolster any potential inheritance she might leave, becomes a suspect in the suspicious death, as does the money-minded Miss Crimp and Lizzie's illegitimate son, an island farmer named Ransome Lovelaine. Sebastian and Margaret find that the family headstones in the churchyard have been defaced in a curious manner, and unsettling actions and signs point to the presence of witchcraft on Great Skua. Dame Beatrice keeps an eye on events, but she and Laura have come to the island on their own mission. Dead pigs, locked lighthouses, midnight rituals and pirates' caves provide enough intrigue for the elderly detective to postpone the writing of her memoirs and investigate the mysteries provided by this wind-swept, rocky Atlantic island.