Part of Series
Two undergraduates decide to spend the long vacation searching for treasure which local legend indicates was buried in a castle well during the Civil War. When the youths get to the site, they are dismayed to find that other parties have also obtained permission to work there. Some archaeologists are hoping to excavate a Bronze Age barrow and two architects, with their helpers, intend to attempt a partial reconstruction of the walls and flanking-towers of the castle. One of the archaeologists is also an amateur astronomer. One night, while studying the stars, he falls from the top of the keep...to his death. The fall is regarded with suspicion when the police discover that all fingerprints have been cleared off the dead man's telescope. Then two brutal murders are committed on the site and it falls to Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and the local police to solve the mystery of the deaths. The treasure? Well, the castle is easily identifiable, so no metal detectors please!
Author
Aka Malcolm Torrie, Stephen Hockaby. Born in Cowley, Oxford, in 1901, Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell was the daughter of market gardener James Mitchell, and his wife, Annie. She was educated at Rothschild School, Brentford and Green School, Isleworth, before attending Goldsmiths College and University College, London from 1919-1921. She taught English, history and games at St Paul's School, Brentford, from 1921-26, and at St Anne's Senior Girls School, Ealing until 1939. She earned an external diploma in European history from University College in 1926, beginning to write her novels at this point. Mitchell went on to teach at a number of other schools, including the Brentford Senior Girls School (1941-50), and the Matthew Arnold School, Staines (1953-61). She retired to Corfe Mullen, Dorset in 1961, where she lived until her death in 1983. Although primarily remembered for her mystery novels, and for her detective creation, Mrs. Bradley, who featured in 66 of her novels, Mitchell also published ten children's books under her own name, historical fiction under the pseudonym Stephen Hockaby, and more detective fiction under the pseudonym Malcolm Torrie. She also wrote a great many short stories, all of which were first published in the Evening Standard. She was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976.
