While en route to visit relatives, Hermione Lestrange falls into company with three agreeable women who are spending their autumn holiday in a forest cabin. Out for a drive, the group discovers a battered bicycle by the side of the road, and closer inspection reveals the unfortunate owner, seemingly dead from head wounds, her body found in a nearby ravine. The police are contacted, but Hermione becomes concerned that suspicion may fall on herself and her new acquaintances, as the scene resembles a hastily covered-up automobile accident. Fearing the worst, she rings up her great-aunt and voices her fears. The young women are ultimately exonerated, but in a quite unforseen way: there is a second murder, and an attempted third, and each of the victims or near-victims (including the roadside casualty) is a member of a touring folk-dancing troupe staying at a local hostel. The newest attacks occured after a performance of hornpipe- and morris-dancing which Hermione and her friends had attended. One dancer was set upon and her body pushed into a broom closet; another troupe member--a man still wearing a lady's wig to replace the absent cyclist in dances--was knocked unconscious and left for dead in the bushes outside. While Inspector Ribble concentrates his investigation on the movements of the folk-dance group, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley considers a longer list of suspects. The Home Office psychoanalyst also imagines a wider range of scenarios than her more dogmatic police counterpart, some of which put Hermione and her friends in danger. Sending her great-niece (and her group) back to her father's pig farm in Stanton St. John, Dame Beatrice builds the case study of a very disturbed individual--someone who takes pleasure in pushing the death-cap mushroom into a victim's wounds.

Young schoolmaster-turned-author Colin Palgrave seeks inspiration for his second novel among the dunes and beaches of Saltacres, where he plans to spend his holiday. He encounters one rather forthright character straight away, and that in the form of 20-year old Camilla Hoveton St. John, a vacationing art student. After some undisguised flirting, Camilla invites Palgrave to stay with her and two others at a beachfront rental, and Palgrave warily accepts. All goes well until the early arrival of the next week's tenants: Colin is surprised to find Morag Lowson, to whom he was once engaged, with her doctor husband and luggage in tow. The house becomes uncomfortably crowded and, growing weary of Camilla's amorous advances, Palgrave opts to sleep in his car. Unable to settle into his cramped quarters, he is persuaded by Camilla to join her in an evening swim. A little later, he leaves the young woman in the sea and returns to the house and his makeshift bed. The morning yields an unpleasant discovery: Camilla's body has washed up on the beach. An inquest determines that the death was accidental, and that the woman had probably been caught in the undertow of an outgoing tide. But what has happened to the unlucky art student's suitcase? It has disappeared from the rental house, and in reality it must have been removed during the night by one of the occupants. A sightless "mumper" (here, a derelict beachcomber) named the Old Mole provides the answer when he finds the hastily buried case of clothes among the dunes. And who was the figure in white that Palgrave saw on the night of Camilla's drowning? All of this activity gives the novelist the inspiration he had hoped for; but when the manuscript turns out to contain more truth than fiction, an unamused murderer makes plans to deposit another body among the mudflats.

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERYRediscover Gladys Mitchell - one of the 'Big Three' female crime fiction writers alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.Christmas in the Cotswolds brings with it the apparition of a country parson, a series of poison pen letters, and a woman's body frozen in the snow. The eminent psychoanalyst and superior sleuth Mrs Bradley has a theory about who's behind all three and sets about a plan to ensnare the unseasonal villain.Opinionated, unconventional, unafraid... If you like Poirot and Miss Marple, you'll love Mrs Bradley.;MORE VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERIES MARGERY ALLINGHAMMystery Mile Police at the Funeral Sweet Danger Flowers for the Judge The Case of the Late Pig The Fashion in Shrouds Traitor's PurseCoroner's Pidgin More Work for the...

When Rupert Sethleigh's body is found one morning, minus its head, laid out in the village butcher shop, the inhabitants of Wandles Parva aren't particularly upset. Sethleigh was a blackmailing money lender and when the unconventional detective Mrs Bradley begins her investigation she finds no shortage of suspects. It soon transpires that most of the village seem to have been wandering about Manor Woods, home of the mysterious druidic stone on which Sethleigh's blood is found splashed, on the night he was murdered but can she eliminate the red herrings and catch the real killer?