Part of Series
Ten people, seven women and three men, visit sites in Cumbria, Argyll, Inverness and the islands of Arran and Lewis. In Cumbria Sister Veronica asserts that she has seen the flitting figure, but only one other person in the group also claims to have seen it. After an unusual version of the Truth Game is played to pass a wet evening at one of the hotels, the party begins to break up. Later on, a body is discovered in the stone circle at Callanish on Lewis and another is found in Oxfordshire, the second one a former member of the group. Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is present when each body is discovered, and it needs all her expertise to solve both mysteries.
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.
