Part of Series
When Colin Spalding agreed to stay with his father in the old lighthouse he had rented for the summer, he did so reluctantly—and only because his father's second wife would be there. For Colin believed himself to be in love with the beautiful Fiona. His attentions were diverted, however, by the arrival of Laura Gavin, acting as temporary matron with the small prep school which had rented a local hotel—and it took little persuasion for him to take up the post of junior master at the school. There he met a former acquaintance, Ronald Ferrars, with whom his step-mother had once had a ship-board romance. But when Ferrars' body was found at the old lighthouse, Colin was a suspect for murder... Fortunately, Laura was at hand to persuade her employer, Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, to visit the scene and uncover the unsavoury truth...
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.
