Here Lies Gloria Mundy (1982)
1982 Michael Joseph blurb:
At
a weekend gathering of relatives and friends, Gloria Mundy, a
woman from the host’s pre-marital past, turns up unheralded
and uninvited, and her visit is followed by a series of
disturbances, domestic disagreements and two unrelated accidents.
These culminate in the discovery of a charred corpse in the
burnt-out dower house in the grounds of the mansion.
Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley has been one of the guests, but only so that she can cast a professional eye over the eccentric, elderly aunt of the hostess, and she is called away before anything untoward or dreadful comes about.
Was Gloria Mundy a witch? What else could explain the mysterious events which follow her unexpected arrival? What else could account for her being seen alive in a London dress shop several weeks after she has been found dead—apparently the victim of murder? With the help of Corin, a young journalist who narrates the story, Dame Beatrice painstakingly pieces together the complicated jigsaw and leaves no stone unturned until she has unearthed the truth.
The setting is the Cotswolds, and the place names, including Uley, with Hetty Pegler’s Tump, and Cleeve Cloud, topped by Belas Knap, are recalled by the author with nostalgic affection.
My review:
A return to the old Mitchell. A good book, with strong surrealistic elements, especially in the powerful final chapter, indicating that in the 1980s, Mitchell was attempting a return to her style of the 1930s and 1940s.
The criminal is announced three-quarters through, but there is no sense of anti-climax, and the attempts to discover how the murderer committed the crime are interesting. The mystery is solved equally by Dame Beatrice, and by the peculiar Mme. Eglantine, the host's aunt with a bee in her Chaucerian bonnet about witchcraft—one of the themes of the book.
As well as Mrs. Bradley, the book abounds with references to the Malleus Maleficorum, quoted extensively by Mme. Eg. Gloria Mundy herself is a descendant of a witch who had been burnt at the stake, creating her distinctive red and black hair. Dame Beatrice herself is descended from a witch, her ancestress Mary Toadflax having narrowly "died within the odour of sanctity". Great-Aunt Eglantine herself commits witchcraft at the end, believing that witchcraft must be fought with witchcraft.
Note that Corin Stratford visited the Callanish stone circle at midnight on Midsummer's Eve (c.f. The Whispering Knights).