Miss Marple's Final Cases (Miss Marple 14)

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!’

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The Marples

Essay by Charles Osborne

The Marples

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

1. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)

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.’

2. The Thirteen Problems (1932)

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.’

3. The Body in the Library (1942)

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.’

4. The Moving Finger (1943)

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.’

5. A Murder Is Announced (1950)

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.’

6. They Do It with Mirrors (1952)

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.’

7. A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)

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.’

8. 4.50 from Paddington (1957)

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.

9. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962)

The quaint village of St. Mary Mead has been glamourized by the presence of s

creen 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.’

10. A Caribbean Mystery (1964)

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?