Death at the Opera

Death At The Opera

Gladys Mitchell

Mrs Bradley 05

1934

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

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Contents

foreword

chapter i: dispersal

chapter ii: rehearsal

chapter iii: death

chapter four: facts

chapter v: interrogation

chapter six: disclosures

chapter vii: eliminations

chapter eight: theories

chapter ix: evidence

chapter x: aunt

chapter xi: admirer

chapter twelve: sweetheart

chapter xiii: fog

chapter xiv: hero

chapter fifteen: deduction

chapter xvi: solution

appendix: mrs. bradley’s conclusions

DEATH AT THE OPERA

The staff of Hillmaston School are gathered to choose the next production to be performed by the Musical, Operatic and Dramatic Society. After some argument they agree on The Mikado and, to everyone’s surprise, the meek and self-effacing Arithmetic Mistress Miss Ferris offers to finance the production. In acknowledgement of her generosity she is offered the part of Katisha, which she readily accepts.

The performance starts well, but half-way through Act One it is discovered that ‘Katisha’ is missing. And when she is found dead in the water-lobby it appears that she has been murdered. Mrs. Bradley, the well-known psychoanalyst, is called in to investigate, whereupon she discovers to her surprise that Miss Ferris had quite a number of enemies—all with a motive for murder…

First published 1934

by

Grayson & Grayson

This edition 1992 by Chivers Press published by arrangement with the author’s estate

ISBN 0 86220 835 1

Foreword copyright © Clare Curzon, 1992

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

All the names mentioned in this story are those of purely fictitious persons

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Redwood Press Limited, Melksham, Wiltshire

To

FLORENCE H. BRACE

FOREWORD

^ »

In any gathering of crime fiction enthusiasts, mention of Gladys Mitchell (1901-1983) will produce an instant reaction. ‘Ah, Mrs Croc!’ will be purred in delight, or in rarer cases gasped in exasperation, on recall of her central serial character. She is a writer one devours with an exuberance responsive to her own, or who has one marvelling at the lengths to which imagination can be stretched within the whodunnit’s recognized limits. Her roller-coaster storylines touch peaks of creative genius and depths where one wonders how she dare demand of her readers such suspension of disbelief.

Death at the Opera, published in 1934, is a teasing title seeming to promise the brilliance of Covent Garden or the Scala, Milan. It concerns instead a young woman teacher found dead during her school’s pre-Christmas production of The Mikado. To an on-stage cast of suspects, delicately caricatured and readily recognizable from real life, the Headmaster, suspecting murder but fearful of further scandals, introduces as private sleuth Mrs (later, Dame) Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, Home Office Psychiatrist, formidable, eagle-eyed and a monstrosity of healthy extroversion.

The school background offers the author an opportunity for gently sly observations on the educational climate, on disapproval of competition, on the problem of mixed-sex staff-rooms and classes. As in depicting her main character, Gladys Mitchell happily equates ‘freaky’ with ‘fascinating’. At thirty-three, she herself is in her thirteenth year as a secondary school mistress teaching history, with English and some games.