St Peter’s Finger by Gladys Mitchel

 

Detailed detective work restores order to convent

Mrs Bradley shows no fear while staying in a sinister convent school in a remote spot on top of some cliffs, even though attempts are made on her life while she is there.

Gladys Mitchell often describes her sleuth as a ‘little old lady’, but Mrs Bradley is still very active and prepared to climb out of a window on to a roof, carry a child’s body up a flight of stairs as an experiment, and sleep in various rooms in the convent, even though she is quite sure there is a murderer among the religious community.

While describing the daily life of nuns living in the convent, as well as Mrs Bradley’s painstaking investigation into the death of a boarder at the school, Gladys Mitchell still manages to keep the reader engaged with the story because of the skill of her writing.

She evokes the atmosphere of the isolated institution and brings alive the personalities of the various black-robed nuns who serve there, keeping the reader turning the pages. No doubt drawing on her own experience as a teacher, she brings to life the routine of the school and creates believable characters among the pupils.

St Peter’s Finger, written in 1938, is Gladys Mitchell’s ninth novel featuring the psychoanalyst and amateur detective Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley.

Called on by her barrister son, Ferdinand Lestrange to investigate the death of a child at the convent, who is the heiress to a fortune, Mrs Bradley, as a favour to him, willingly enters the convent herself and lives like one of the nuns. However, she also has her faithful chauffeur George, residing nearby, ready to take her out for the occasional sustaining meal and to make enquiries further afield. He also helps out with the investigation.

While Mrs Bradley tests alibis, interviews suspects and witnesses, and holds long debates with the nuns,  Gladys Mitchell cleverly points the reader in several different directions until  the novel reaches an ingenious and satisfying ending.