Part of Series
Roger Hoskyn and Dorothy Woodcote are spending their Easter weekend holiday on a walking tour of the English countryside. Toward day's end, the pair find themselves still a long distance from a train station and decide to stop at Whiteledge, a country manor house, to ask directions. To their surprise, the butler ushers them in and leads them to bedrooms and baths, where the travellers are to wash and then join the house for dinner. Arriving at table, Roger and Dorothy are soon in the company of some interesting persons: they recognize Claudia Denbies, a striking redhead and a celebrated violinist, and master George Merrow, whose birthday the party is celebrating, as two of three horse riders who passed them that afternoon. Dorothy notices that the third rider, a tall, handsome man, is absent from the group, and an enquiry reveals that Mr. Harry Lingfield went out riding and has not yet returned. Dorothy also learns that her and Roger's invitations were given by the superstitious and eccentric Lady Catherine Leith, who didn't want Lingfield's appearance to create thirteen at table. To Roger's right sits an unsettling old lady named Mrs. Bradley, whose black eyes take in the details of all her dining companions. Mr. Lingfield still hasn't returned to Whiteledge by the following day, and Mrs. Bradley and the travellers, under the auspices of taking the dog for a walk, retrace the trail on which Dorothy and Roger saw the horse riders. The dog disappears into a copse, and its pursuers come across the naked and headless body of a man. It appears to be the body of the missing Mr. Lingfield, but there is some opposition to this theory, notably from Claudia Denbies, Lingfield's lover. The corpse's head is not found at the scene, and an inquest only seems to raise more questions. Mrs. Bradley has been acting as a consulting psychiatrist for someone in the house, but will not reveal her patient's identity to the police. A Scottish train conductor testifies to seeing a decapitated body laying across the tracks. The inspector's suspicion falls on Mrs. Denbies, but then who is responsible for three attempts on Roger's life, and why? When a second beheading occurs, Mrs. Bradley steps in and offers a solution which incorporates archery, sculpture, second sight, seven and sixpence, the "mount of Venus," tripwire, barbed wire, and a burned-out car in high-spirited—if not entirely believable—fashion
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.
