The Mudflats of the Dead (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “So no hotel entered into the arrangements at all!”

  “As the police found out. In any case, Lowson would never have risked being seen at a hotel in the company of a man he intended to murder. They would have had coffee and sandwiches in the car as soon as they got out of London. The autopsy showed that arsenic was in both the food and the drink. As soon as Palgrave was taken ill, Lowson drove towards the river—there are alleys wide enough for a car—and dragged the body out of the car and then pushed it over the bank into the Thames.”

  “I wonder who cleaned the car? It must have been in a pretty awful mess,” said Laura, practical as ever. “So Lowson went to Saltacres with the full intention of killing Camilla the blackmailer. How would he know where she was?”

  “They would have kept in close touch because of the blackmail payments.”

  “So Lowson was a double murderer and committed suicide when the Kirbys warned him that you and the police were on the track. Do you think Palgrave’s novel would have given the truth away if ever it had been published?”

  “Only to a man with a guilty conscience, and he knew the truth already.”

  About the Author

  Gladys Mitchell was born in the village of Cowley, Oxford, in April 1901. She was educated at the Rothschild School in Brentford, the Green School in Isleworth, and at Goldsmiths and University Colleges in London. For many years Miss Mitchell taught history and English, swimming, and games. She retired from this work in 1950 but became so bored without the constant stimulus and irritation of teaching that she accepted a post at the Matthew Arnold School in Staines, where she taught English and history, wrote the annual school play, and coached hurdling. She was a member of the Detection Club, the PEN, the Middlesex Education Society, and the British Olympic Association. Her father’s family are Scots, and a Scottish influence has appeared in some of her books.