Part of Series
Most people overlooked the sullen deaf-mute teenager Francis Caux…until he led police to the scene of a murder. It was psychoanalyst and detective Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley who found a clever way to communicate with Francis, thus learning that his recent fear of water stemmed from a body chained to the underside of a boathouse dinghy. But how did Francis know the location of the body? Even more puzzling is the discovery of a second murder linked to another Caux teen, Derek, in a nearby village. Mrs. Bradley suspects that the teenage Caux boys are somehow related, and soon must consider the possibility that they are coconspirators…in murder. The beloved eccentric detective Mrs. Bradley pieces together details from a tragic past and a troubling present in this delightfully deceptive classic mystery.
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.
