Krishna
The pastor Clement, who narrates, is having a meal at his house in the
Vicarage with his wife Griselda (not a great cook but twenty years his junior and very pretty), his nephew Dennis and the housekeeper Mary. It appears that everyone despises Colonel Protheroe, a parishioner, including the Vicar himself.
The Colonel’s daughter Lettice is a forgetful, vapid but rebellious spirit. She wants to be painted by a famous young painter (who is at the Vicar’s house painting his wife) in her bathing suit over the Colonel’s objections. She wishes the father was dead because he won’t give her money to spend.
The guests that day for the pastor include that nosy and horrible Miss Marple, in his wife’s telling.
When they meet, the talk turns to Ms Cram who is working as a secretary to the unmarried but older Dr Stone. Gossip has it that she is trying to seduce him into marriage. Miss Marple recounted a quarrel between Dr Stone and Colonel Protheroe.
The vicar accidentally stumbles in to witness a tight embrace of the artist Redding and Mrs Anne Protheroe, and withdraws silently before he could be seen. (The wife is, of course, the stepmother of Lettice who herself fancies the artist). Anne, of course, had seen him and confesses later that she loves Redding.
When the Protheroe is found dead in the Vicar’s own study and when the Vicar meets Lawrence leaving with a frantic panic in his face, things get interesting. Lawrence gives himself up to the police, producing the murder weapon and confessing to his crime. An open and shut case then? Not in an Agatha Christie novel.
Miss Marple comes enquiring. She seems to think that Lawrence is not guilty especially since he confessed, confusing the priest.
They realize that the lovers are protecting each other, when Anne Protheroe also confesses to killing the Colonel. Both are impossible given the time of the murder – they were elsewhere.
Miss Marple says that at least six – possibly seven – people had a motive to kill Protheroe. In addition, the vapid Lettice Protheroe does not really seem that clueless and it seems to be a persona she has adopted.
Mrs Lestrange, a neighbour is agitated and wants to confide something in Clement only to have Inspector Slack visit and subject her to a grilling. She then sends the Vicar saying ‘I have already chosen my path’.
Lawrence and Clement try some amateur sleuthing. With no success.
In the meanwhile Mrs Lestrange is overheard, according to accounts by the servants in Colonel’s house, of having had an argument one day before with the Colonel. Protheroe says clearly that he would not allow Mrs Lestrange ‘to see her’.
When Clement escorts Dr Stone to the station, he meets an author nephew of Miss Marple. Later, when he goes to dinner with Miss Marple, he is shocked to realize that ‘Dr Stone’ is an imposter and the suitcase that he saw Ms Cram carry is recovered and found to have silver articles from Colonel’s house.
You also have the ‘vague’ Lettice trying to frame Anne in the murder by dropping Anne’s ear rings in the scene of the crime but confronted by the priest who realizes that Anne could not have dropped it. Lettice and Anne hate each other.
The usual tangle of suspicious characters. And clarifications.
There is the painting in Anne’s attic that has been savagely slashed and face obliterated.
The detection from Miss Marple, of course, clears all of it up. She breaks down in a logical way the clues that were left and also provides clues to force evidence of guilt from the players.
This is the first book in which Miss Marple appears.
If there is a complaint from me, it is this : the author has borrowed the same kind of framework (in terms of who the killer is and how they evaded suspicion by an audacious trick) from the first book in which Poirot appears : A Mysterious Affair At Styles.
Still, after all these years, this book still enthralls.
7/10
‘- – Krishna