Part of Series
Trouble starts in the quiet coastal village of Abbots Crozier when Bryony and Morpeth, the eccentric Rant sisters of Crozier Lodge, decide to breed Pharaoh hounds, the oldest domesticated dogs in the world. The sisters reluctantly take on a kennel-maid to care for the Pharaohs but, some time after her arrival, their Labrador, Sekhmet, is stolen. The theft leads to the discovery of a dead body in the river. Is the unidentified corpse connected with the night prowler who has been tapping on the windows of Crozier Lodge? Before the mystery can be solved, a second body is found on the moor. When suspicion falls on the Rants’ kennel-maid, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and Laura Gavin are called in to retrace the steps of the dead men and find out how and why they died.
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.
