Mrs Bradley
| Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Speedy Death |
| Created by | Gladys Mitchell |
| Portrayed by |
Mary Wimbush (BBC Radio) Diana Rigg (TV) |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Psychiatrist |
| Title | Mrs later Dame |
| Family | Maiden name unknown |
| Spouse(s) | Widowed (thrice) |
| Nationality | British |
Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley is a fictional detective created by Gladys Mitchell. Mrs (later Dame Beatrice) Bradley is Mitchell's most significant and long-lived character, appearing in 66 novels that were published between 1929 and 1975.
Bradley is often described in reptilian terms: “a deadly serpent basking in the sun or of an alligator smiling gently while birds removed animal irritants from its armoured frame”; or “a hag-like pterodactyl”. Perhaps the most amusing description is to be found in Dead Men’s Morris (1936), where she has “the maternal anxiety of a boa-constrictor which watches its young attempting to devour their first donkey”! In later years, she is known as ‘Mrs Crocodile’, a nickname given to her by her secretary Laura Menzies—although originally coined by the village lunatic Mrs Gatty in The Saltmarsh Murders (1932).
Physically, she is very much stronger than she looks, her arm "deceptively stick-like" and capable of exerting and sustaining considerable pressure, and even the "yellow forefinger" with which she habitually prods people in the ribs, "like an iron bolt." When Laura is downed in a fight, Mrs Bradley performs "a feat...to make strong men quail," picking up "the hefty Laura in her arms" and carrying her off "to put her to bed as though she had been a small child" (Laura returns the compliment in My Father Sleeps, bearing Mrs Bradley in her "powerful grasp...on to Scottish soil, much...in the manner of the Roman eagles being carried on to disputed territory"). Elsewhere, she proves herself "no mean performer at a game in which muscle and temper, skill, boldness and patience all played a considerable part."
As a detective, Mrs Bradley is an exemplar of the omniscient school. Messrs. Barzun & Taylor refer, in Catalogue of Crime, to a story, "Daisy Bell," in which Mrs. Bradley is "cut down to size;" but this is probably the unique instance of that process, since it is rare to find her even disconcerted, and the usual turn of events is quite the reverse. It is a safe prediction that she will "lay down her cards and scoop the pool...She always does. She weaves her web and, in the end, the flies walk into it." Her overall mental ascendancy is quite remarkable. Deep-dyed villains blush and fumble and fail to meet her gaze, and Alastair Bing and Mrs. Bryce Harringay are only the first and second in a long line of people who are "afraid of her." Her habit of addressing most of the males she encounters, from schoolboys to Chief Constables, as "child" is further indicative of her benign Olympian supremacy.
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Wikipedia