Miss Marple's Final Cases (14 page)

‘But she
was
locked in,’ said Lou.

‘I know. That is where the policeman comes in.’

‘What policeman?’

‘Exactly—what policeman? I wonder, Inspector, if you would mind telling me how and when
you
arrived on the scene?’

The inspector looked a little puzzled.

‘At twelve twenty-nine we received a telephone call from Mrs Cresswell, housekeeper to Miss Greenshaw, stating that her mistress had been shot. Sergeant Cayley and myself went out there at once in a car and arrived at the house at twelve thirty-five. We found Miss Greenshaw dead and the two ladies locked in their rooms.’

‘So, you see, my dear,’ said Miss Marple to Lou. ‘The police constable
you
saw wasn’t a real police constable. You never thought of him again—one doesn’t—one just accepts one more uniform as part of the law.’

‘But who—why?’

‘As to who—well, if they are playing
A Kiss for Cinderella
, a policeman is the principal character. Nat Fletcher would only have to help himself to the costume he wears on the stage. He’d ask his way at a garage being careful to call attention to the time—twelve twenty-five, then drive on quickly, leave his car round a corner, slip on his police uniform and do his “act”.’

‘But why?—why?’

‘
Someone
had to lock the housekeeper’s door on the outside, and someone had to drive the arrow through Miss Greenshaw’s throat. You can stab anyone with an arrow just as well as by shooting it—but it needs force.’

‘You mean they were both in it?’

‘Oh yes, I think so. Mother and son as likely as not.’

‘But Miss Greenshaw’s sister died long ago.’

‘Yes, but I’ve no doubt Mr Fletcher married again. He sounds the sort of man who would, and I think it possible that the child died too, and that this so-called nephew was the second wife’s child, and not really a relation at all. The woman got a post as housekeeper and spied out the land. Then he wrote as her nephew and proposed to call upon her—he may have made some joking reference to coming in his policeman’s uniform—or asked her over to see the play. But I think she suspected the truth and refused to see him. He would have been her heir if she had died without making a will—but of course once she had made a will in the housekeeper’s favour (as they thought) then it was clear sailing.’

‘But why use an arrow?’ objected Joan. ‘So very far fetched.’

‘Not far fetched at all, dear. Alfred belonged to an archery club—Alfred was meant to take the blame. The fact that he was in the pub as early as twelve twenty was most unfortunate from their point of view. He always left a little before his proper time and that would have been just right—’ she shook her head. ‘It really seems all wrong—morally, I mean, that Alfred’s laziness should have saved his life.’

The inspector cleared his throat.

‘Well, madam, these suggestions of yours are very interesting. I shall have, of course, to investigate—’

Miss Marple and Raymond West stood by the rockery and looked down at that gardening basket full of dying vegetation.

Miss Marple murmured:

‘Alyssum, saxifrage, cytisus, thimble campanula…Yes, that’s all the proof
I
need. Whoever was weeding here yesterday morning was no gardener—she pulled up plants as well as weeds. So now I
know
I’m right. Thank you, dear Raymond, for bringing me here. I wanted to see the place for myself.’

She and Raymond both looked up at the outrageous pile of Greenshaw’s Folly.

A cough made them turn. A handsome young man was also looking at the house.

‘Plaguey big place,’ he said. ‘Too big for nowadays—or so they say. I dunno about that. If I won a football pool and made a lot of money, that’s the kind of house I’d like to build.’

He smiled bashfully at them.

‘Reckon I can say so now—that there house was built by my great-grandfather,’ said Alfred Pollock. ‘And a fine house it is, for all they call it Greenshaw’s Folly!’

The Marples

Essay by Charles Osborne

The Murder at the Vicarage
;
The Thirteen Problems
;
The Body in the Library
;
The Moving Finger
;
A Murder Is Announced
;
They Do It with Mirrors
;
A Pocket Full of Rye
;
4.50 from Paddington
;
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
;
A Caribbean Mystery
;
At Bertram’s Hotel
;
Nemesis
;
Sleeping Murder
;
Miss Marple’s Final Cases

The murder of Colonel Protheroe—shot through the head—is a shock to everyone in St. Mary Mead, though hardly an unpleasant one. Now even the vicar, who had declared that killing the detested Protheroe would be ‘doing the world at large a favour,’ is a suspect—the Colonel has been dispatched in the clergyman’s study, no less. But tiny St. Mary Mead is overpopulated with suspects. There is of course the faithless Mrs Protheroe; and there is of course her young lover—an artist, to boot. Perhaps more surprising than the revelation of the murderer is the detective who will crack the case: ‘a whitehaired
old lady with a gentle, appealing manner.’ Miss Jane Marple has arrived on the scene, and crime literature’s private men’s club of great detectives will never be the same.

• Saturday Review of Literature
  : ‘When she really hits her stride, as she does here, Agatha Christie is hard to surpass.’
  

Over six Tuesday evenings a group gathers at Miss Marple’s house to ponder unsolved crimes. The company is inclined to forget their elderly hostess as they become mesmerized by the sinister tales they tell one another. But it is always Miss Marple’s quiet genius that names the criminal or the means of the misdeed. As indeed is true in subsequent gatherings at the country home of Colonel and Mrs Bantry, where another set of terrible wrongs is related by the assembled guests—and righted, by Miss Marple.

The stories: ‘The Tuesday Night Club’; ‘The Idol House of Astarte’; ‘Ingots of Gold’; ‘The Bloodstained Pavement’; ‘Motive
v
Opportunity’; ‘The Thumb Mark of St Peter’; ‘The Blue Geranium’; ‘The Companion’; ‘The Four Suspects’; ‘A Christmas Tragedy’; ‘The Herb of Death’; ‘The Affair at the Bungalow’; ‘Death by Drowning.’

• Daily Mirror
  : ‘The plots are so good that one marvels…Most of them would have made a full-length thriller.’
  

The very-respectable Colonel and Mrs Bantry have awakened to discover the body of a young woman in their library. She is wearing evening dress and heavy make-up, which is now smeared across her cold cheeks. But who is she? How did she get there? And what is her connection with another dead girl, whose charred remains are later discovered in an abandoned quarry? The Bantrys turn to Miss Marple to solve the mystery.

Of note: Many of the residents of St. Mary Mead, who appeared in the first full-length Miss Marple mystery twelve years earlier,
The Murder at the Vicarage
, return in
The Body in the Library
. Mrs Christie wrote
Body
simultaneously with the Tommy and Tuppence Beresford spy thriller
N or M?
, alternating between the two novels to keep herself, as she put it, ‘fresh at task.’

• The Times Literary Supplement
  wrote of this second Marple novel: ‘It is hard not to be impressed.’
  

Lymstock is a town with more than its share of shameful secrets—a town where even a sudden outbreak of anonymous hate-mail causes only a minor stir. But all of that changes when one of the recipients, Mrs Symmington, appears to have been driven to suicide. ‘I can’t go on,’ her final note reads. Only Miss Marple questions the coroner’s verdict.
Was
this the work of a poison pen? Or of a
poisoner
?

Of note:
The Moving Finger
was a favourite of its author. From
An Autobiography
(1977): ‘I find that…I am really pleased with…
The Moving Finger
. It is a great test to reread what one has written some seventeen or eighteen years before. One’s view changes. Some do not stand the test of time, others do.’

• The Times
  : ‘Beyond all doubt the puzzle in
  The Moving Finger
  is fit for the experts.’
  

The invitation spelled it out quite clearly: ‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m.’ Everyone in town expected a simple party game—a secret ‘murderer’ is chosen, the lights go out, the ‘victim’ falls, and the players guess ‘whodunit.’ Amusing, indeed—until a real corpse is discovered. A game as murderous as this requires the most brilliant player of all: Jane Marple.

• Robert Barnard: ‘As good as Agatha Christie ever wrote.’
  
• A.A. Milne: ‘Establishes firmly her claim to the throne of detection. The plot is as ingenious as ever…the dialogue both wise and witty; while the suspense is maintained very skillfully…’
  
• The New York Times Book Review
  : ‘A super-smooth Christie…neat murders in an English village…an assortment of her famous red herrings, all beautifully marinated.’
  

A sense of danger pervades the rambling Victorian mansion in which Jane Marple’s friend Carrie Louise lives—and not only because the building doubles as a rehabilitation centre for criminal youths. One inmate attempts, and fails, to shoot dead the administrator. But simultaneously, in another part of the building, a mysterious visitor is less lucky. Miss Marple must employ all her cunning to solve the riddle of the stranger’s visit, and his murder—while protecting her friend from a similarly dreadful fate.

• Guardian
  : ‘Brilliant.’
  
• The New York Times
  : ‘No one on either side of the Atlantic does it better.’
  

Rex Fortescue, king of a financial empire, was sipping tea in his ‘counting house’ when he suffered an agonising and sudden death. The only clue to his murder: ‘loose grain’ found in his pocket. The murder seems without rhyme or reason—until shrewd Jane Marple recalls that delightful nursery rhyme, ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence.’ A playful hint indeed for a murder that is anything but child’s play.

• Times Literary Supplement
  : ‘Ingenious.’
  
• The New York Times
  : ‘The best of the novels starring Miss Marple.’
  

For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman’s throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs McGillicuddy’s friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case—for there is no corpse, and no one is missing. Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.

Of note: The introduction of Lucy Eyelesbarrow as a side-kick to Miss Marple was lauded by the critics, but her work with the older detective was limited to this novel.

The quaint village of St. Mary Mead has been glamourized by the presence of screen queen Marina Gregg, who has taken up residence in preparation for her comeback. But when a local fan is poisoned, Marina finds herself starring in a real-life mystery—supported with scene-stealing aplomb by Jane Marple, who suspects that the lethal cocktail was intended for someone else. But who? If it was meant for
Marina, then why? And before the final fade-out, who else from St. Mary Mead’s cast of seemingly innocent characters is going to be eliminated?

• Times Literary Supplement
  : ‘The pieces…drop into place with a satisfying click. Agatha Christie deserves her fame.’
  

As Jane Marple sat basking in the tropical sunshine she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Then a question was put to her by a stranger: ‘Would you like to see a picture of a murderer?’ Before she has a chance to answer, the man vanishes, only to be found dead the next day. The mysteries abound: Where is the picture? Why is the hotelier prone to nightmares? Why doesn’t the most talked-about guest, a reclusive millionaire, ever leave his room? And why is Miss Marple herself fearful for her life?

Of note:
A Caribbean Mystery
introduces the wealthy (and difficult) Mr Jason Rafiel, who will call upon Miss Marple for help in
Nemesis
(1971)—after his death.

• Observer
  : ‘Liveliness…infectious zest…as good as anything Mrs Christie has done.’
  
• The New York Times
  : ‘Throws off the false clues and misleading events as only a master of the art can do.’
  

When Jane Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she’s looking for at Bertram’s: a restored London hotel with traditional decor, impeccable service—and an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer. Yet not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric guest makes his way to the airport on the wrong day…

Of note: Bertram’s was inspired by Brown’s Hotel in London, where the author was a frequent visitor.

• Saturday Review of Literature
  : ‘One of the author’s very best productions, with splendid pace, bright lines.’
  
• The New York Times
  : ‘A joy to read from beginning to end, especially in its acute sensitivity to the contrasts between this era and that of Miss Marple’s youth.’
  
• The New Yorker
  : ‘Mrs Christie’s pearly talent for dealing with all the words and pomps that go with murder English-style shimmers steadily in this tale of the noisy woe that shatters the extremely expensive peace of Bertram’s famously old-fashioned hotel.’
  

Even the unflappable Miss Marple is astounded as she reads the letter addressed to her on instructions from the recently deceased tycoon Mr Jason Rafiel, whom she had met on holiday in the West Indies (
A Caribbean Mystery
). Recognising in her a natural flair for justice and a genius for crime-solving, Mr Rafiel has bequeathed to Miss Marple a £20,000 legacy—and a legacy of an entirely different sort. For he has asked Miss Marple to investigate…his own murder. The only problem is, Mr Rafiel has failed to name a suspect or suspects. And, whoever they are, they will certainly be determined to thwart Miss Marple’s inquiries—no matter what it will take to stop her.

Of note:
Nemesis
is the last Jane Marple mystery that Agatha Christie wrote—though not the last Marple published.

• Best Sellers
  : ‘The old charm is still there and a good deal of the old magic in plotting, too.’
  
• Times Literary Supplement
  : ‘Miss Marple is an old lady now, knowing that a scent for evil is still, in the evening of her days, her peculiar gift.’
  

Soon after Gwenda Reed moves into her new home, odd things start to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernise the house, she only succeeds in dredging up its past. Worse, she feels an irrational sense of terror every time she climbs
the stairs…In fear, Gwenda turns to Jane Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Between them, they are to solve a ‘perfect’ crime committed many years before…

Of note: Agatha Christie wrote
Sleeping Murder
during World War II and had it placed in a bank vault for over thirty years.

• Chicago Tribune
  : ‘Agatha Christie saved the best for last.’
  
• Sunday Express
  : ‘A puzzle that is tortuous, surprising, and…satisfying.’
  

Despite the title, the stories collected here recount cases from the middle of Miss. Marple’s career. They are: ‘Sanctuary’; ‘Strange Jest’; ‘Tape-Measure Murder’; ‘The Case of the Caretaker’; ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’; ‘Miss Marple Tells a Story’; ‘The Dressmaker’s Doll’; ‘In a Glass Darkly’; ‘Greenshaw’s Folly.’

• The Republican
  (Springfield, Massachusetts): ‘When it all becomes clear as day, the reader can only say, “Now why didn’t I think of that?” But he never does. Mrs Christie at her best.’