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Former governess Emma Betony is living in quiet and boring retirement when two unexpected letters arrive.  The first is a lonely hearts magazine, with an entry(“Lonely Batchelor, age 49, good health, comfortable income, seeks friendship of unattached lady with view to matrimony”) highlighted by the anonymous sender.   The second is an appeal for help from a former student.   Grace Aram is running Makeways, a struggling boarding school for girls, newly relocated to a site of former nursing home in Dorset.  Grace isn’t interested in Miss Betony’s teaching skills—she wants a trusted friend to help identify the culprit behind a series of troubling events.  Two nursing patients have remained at Makeways and one appears to be the victim of a poisoner.  It is not clear who could be responsible for the ongoing trickle of arsenic found in Miss Thurloe’s drinks- the new abrasive doctor, the pragmatic nurse, the nervous teaching staff or the high-strung students.  During her investigations, Miss Betony uncovers an overwhelming sense of fear on the part of Makeways’ inhabitants, and clues that lead to the Great Ambrosio, a charismatic fortune-teller, who seems to have an undue influence on various teachers, students –  and Miss Thurloe.First published in 1941, Fear and Miss Betony marks the final appearance of Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe—but it is Miss Betony herself who fights through fear and solves the case. Contemporary critics proclaimed the book an instant classic, with an ingenious plot.

It won’t be much longer now. Keep your head and hold your tongue.”In Shadows Before, events from the past are the catalyst for murder.  In hope of a fresh start after being acquitted of the murder of his sister-in-law, Matthew Weir has moved his family to Spanwater, a remote manor in the Cotswolds. But his heiress wife Catherine is traumatised by her sister’s death and Matthew’s trial, and has retreated into childhood memories, believing she is living in the Welsh border cottage of her childhood.  Hired to keep Catherine safe in her wanderings, companion Aurelia Brett is fleeing poverty and hunger in London,  Matthew’s brother Augustus is trying to elude past debts. His nephew is haunted by the death of his father. Then Catherine dies suddenly, and arsenic is found in her home-made tea.  Evidence suggests someone in the house, but Chief Inspector Pardoe finds conflicting clues and suspicious behaviour among Spanwater’s neighbours too.   When a second death occurs, Pardoe  – and the reader – must decide which shadows points to the perpetrator and why.Dorothy Bowers (1902 – 1948) was a champion of “fair play” mysteries, in which all the clues are cunningly displayed within the context of the story.