Faintley speaking

Late one wet night, George Mandsell, a writer with little money and fewer prospects, takes shelter in a telephone kiosk meaning to ring his publisher about an advance. The phone rings first. The caller, a Miss Faintley, curtly orders him to collect a package from a neighbouring station and carry it to a dubious shopkeeper in the village. Mandsell tries to say she has the wrong man, but she hangs up before he can. Seeing a chance to earn a little cash and perhaps gather material for a story, he goes after the parcel.

Meanwhile, thirteen-year-old Mark Street is unhappy to learn that his least favourite teacher is staying at the same hotel as his family for the summer. Miss Faintley, whom Mark privately calls "old Semi-Conscious", has oddly asked him to join her on a trip to a nearby town. Mark gives her the slip at Torbury and heads back to the hotel for a swim without supervision. When Miss Faintley fails to return by the next day, he grows uneasy and shares his worry with Laura Menzies, a fellow guest who has become his partner in sports.

On an early morning walk, Mark and Laura come across an empty house hemmed in by woodland on one side and coastline on the other. Disregarding the trespassing warnings, they look around and eventually find a woman's body in the gorse. Laura reports the discovery to her employer, Mrs Beatrice Bradley, and the elderly detective soon takes up the case. Was the dead woman Miss Faintley, and if so, who killed her and why? Mrs Bradley pursues the question through a trip to the caves at Lascaux, a study of botany books, some seaborne watching, and friendships with Mandsell and a parrot that speaks Latin.

Faintley Speaking is a Mrs Bradley mystery by Gladys Mitchell, the British author known for her psychiatrist sleuth. It suits readers who enjoy classic English village-and-seaside detective stories with an eccentric investigator.