Book description
A hole in the ground, such as the air vent of a defunct Cornish tin
mine, could lend itself to sinister uses.
Martin Filton is a Cambridge medical student when he first encounters
the mysterious affair at Tregellick. Afraid of being laughed he doesn’t
go to the police with his story of shots fired, the gory bundle he had
retrieved when it fell from a jeep, and how, a little later, he
discovered a piece of the same bloodstained sacking caught on the wire
fence round ‘the hole’.
But no-one was ever reported missing at Tregellick, much less there
being any rumour of murder. The whole thing lies fallow at the back of
Martin’s mind until, twenty years later, taking a break from his career
as a surgeon, he returns to Cornwall and meets Drina. Her home was the
farm to which the jeep was going; her ‘aunt’, sister of Drina’s
foster-mother, had been its driver. The puzzle of Drina’s parentage and
the unhappiness this caused her spurs Martin into investigation both of
that mystery and the curious events of that autumn day long ago.
Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in Manchester, England.
Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin School, then trained at
Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the University College
Hospital in London she was granted M. R.C. S. and L. R.C. P. in 1922,
and a M. B. B. S. in 1924.
Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous
uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.
Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard
. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in
1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books
featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at
Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped
found the Crime Writers' Association in 1953 and served as chair during
1959-60.
