Death Comes at Christmas by Gladys Mitchell

A murky tale of murder among the Morris men and pig farmers

The Vintage edition of 
Death Comes at Christmas

We get a glimpse of Mrs Bradley’s gentler side when she goes to spend Christmas with her nephew, Carey, who is a pig farmer, in this sixth novel about the eccentric psychoanalyst and sleuth.

Taking with her a boar’s head as a present for her host, she settles down to enjoy the festive season in Oxfordshire in the company of Carey, who seems genuinely fond of his distinguished aunt, her grand-nephew, Denis, and Carey’s friend, Hugh.

Cackling, and wearing some of her luridly-coloured cardigans, Mrs Bradley dines on, not surprisingly, lots of pork, and she entertains her fellow guests with anecdotes about murderers and unusual psychological cases she has encountered.

But then one of Carey’s neighbours, a local solicitor, is found dead near the river on Christmas Day and although he is thought to have suffered a heart attack, Mrs Bradley is not convinced that his death was the result of natural causes.

Later, a neighbouring pig farmer is also found dead, seemingly having been killed by one of his owns boars. Suspecting murder again, Mrs Bradley fearlessly tries to uncover the truth about the death, despite facing physical threats herself.

Although the first death occurs at Christmas, it takes the lady detective until Easter to unravel the complex case, but I would still recommend this novel as a good read for the festive season.

Death Comes at Christmas is enlivened by descriptions of some of the local characters. Carey’s housekeeper, Mrs Ditch, who he summons to his presence by yodeling, her Morris Dancing husband and son, and her daughter, Linda, who is frequently criticised by local people for ‘trollopsen’ about the area, all add to the bizarre humour.

Mrs Bradley and Denis discover that Carey’s house has secret passages and a ghost, and the reader gets the chance to learn a lot about Morris dancing, pig farming and heraldry during the novel, which was originally published under the title Dead Men’s Morris in 1936.

Gladys Mitchell wrote
66 Mrs Bradley novels

Gladys Mitchell wrote 66 novels featuring her amateur sleuth, Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, as well as some mystery novels under the name, Malcolm Torrie, and historical adventure novels under the name, Stephen Hockaby.

A teacher by profession, Gladys wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and over the years she built a large and loyal following for her eccentric, but brilliant, detective, Mrs Bradley.

Gladys was an early member of the Detection Club along with Agatha Christie, G K Chesterton, and Dorothy L Sayers, but she frequently enjoyed satirising or reversing the traditional patterns of the genre.

She was interested in architecture, ancient buildings, folklore and British customs, subjects that were often explored in her novels and short stories. She also studied the works of Sigmund Freud and developed an interest in witchcraft.

In 1961, Gladys retired from teaching but she continued to write detective novels and received the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 1976. The last Mrs Bradley mystery was published in 1984, the year after her death.

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