MISS MARPLE – AN INTRODUCTION

Miss Marple, an elderly spinster living in a small English village, must be one of the least likely detectives ever to have graced the pages of fiction.

Jane Marple was an extension of the character of Caroline Sheppard, sister of the book’s narrator, from the 1926 Hercule Poirot novel The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd. Miss Sheppard is a late middle aged spinster who has the uncanny knack of knowing everything that goes on in her village. Agatha Christie clearly saw the potential to turn Miss Sheppard into a detective, and the following year, the first Miss Marple story was published.

We are told that Miss Marple spent almost all of her life in the archetypal English village of St Mary Mead, and that living in a small village allowed her to develop an outstanding knowledge of human nature that would prove invaluable to her as a detective.

It is a myth though that St Mary Mead had an unduly high crime rate, as only a few of the Marple tales were actually set in the village. The first Marple novel, 1930’s Murder At The Vicarage, must be regarded as the only real St Mary Mead village mystery novel. While St Mary Mead features in two more full length titles, in 1942’s The Body In The Library, once the body has been discovered at Gossington Hall in the village, much of the action takes place elsewhere. In the 1961 novel The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side, Gossington Hall sees more than one murder committed on the premises, but much of the novel is set in the film world of Gossington’s then owner, actress Marina Gregg.

Miss Marple featured in 12 novels and 20 short stories, which is much less than the 33 novels and 51 stories published which feature Christie's best known detective Hercule Poirot. This is possibly because the character of Miss Marple which Christie created would have seemed out of place in the international settings which are often used in her novels. Only once does Miss Marple solve a case abroad.

Although Poirot definitely accepted some cases with little or no financial reward, it is undoubtedly the case that some of his other cases made him a very wealthy man. With Miss Marple, while it is not explicitly stated that she conducted her sleuthing without financial reward, it is generally accepted that she was only remunerated for one case – the final Marple novel Nemesis - when she received a legacy in return for solving a matter of great significance.

Further comments on some of the Marple film and television adaptations appear under the relevant book titles later. But most Christie aficionados would acknowledge that the definitive screen Miss Marple was Joan Hickson, who appeared in BBC dramatisations of all 12 novels between 1984 and 1992. In more recent years, Miss Marple has been played on ITV by Geraldine McEwan and by Julia McKenzie, but these adaptations are almost universally regarded as being massively inferior to the BBC versions. Plot and character changes, introducing Miss Marple into Christie stories that did not feature her and unnecessary appearances by comedians are abundant in the McEwan and McKenzie screenplays. Other actresses to have played Jane Marple include Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury, Helen Hayes and Gracie Fields.

The Murder At The Vicarage (1930)

The first Jane Marple novel holds a special place in the hearts of many Christie devotees. Its portrayal of English village life is nothing short of hilarious as it describes the scandals, trials and tribulations of St Mary Mead. Griselda Clement, wife of the village rector, hosts ‘tea and scandal’ parties at which three elderly spinsters – Miss Marple, Miss Caroline Wetherby and Miss Amanda Hartnell – and one local widow, Mrs Price-Ridley, meet to discuss the latest gossip. At the start of the book, Miss Marple is firmly considered to be one of the village’s ‘old pussies’, but after she has solved the baffling murder case she is presented with here, opinions of her not surprisingly change considerably.

The victim in this novel is Colonel Lucius Protheroe, owner of Old Hall, the second manor house of St Mary Mead. Col Protheroe is shot as he waits in the study of the vicarage, waiting for the vicar to return from what turns out to have been an unnecessary journey. The Reverend Leonard Clement not only sees his house turned into a murder scene, but he also narrates Murder At The Vicarage, the only occasion on which a Marple novel is narrated by another character.

Col Protheroe is almost universally disliked in St Mary Mead, and Miss Marple soon realises there are many villagers with a motive. His much younger second wife, Anne, is having an adulterous relationship with local artist Lawrence Redding, while the Colonel’s daughter also heartily dislikes her father. In his capacity as churchwarden he has accused either the vicar or his curate of stealing the collection money from the Sunday services; and as local magistrate he has recently sentenced local man Bill Archer to a jail term, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Mary, who is also Rev Clement’s incompetent housemaid. Furthermore a man claiming to be an eminent archaeologist is sniffing rather too closely around some of Old Hall’s valuables, and who exactly is the rather mysteriously named Mrs Lestrange?

The Murder At The Vicarage is the first time Miss Marple meets Detective Inspector Slack. Slack is extremely rude and officious, as evidenced by his unwillingness to listen to Rev Clement trying to tell him a vital piece of evidence early in his investigation, concerning the clock in his study. Not for the last time, at the end of the novel Slack is forced to eat humble pie and acknowledge the superior detective skills of Miss Marple.

Miss Marple’s neighbour Dr Haydock makes his first appearance as both local GP and police surgeon in this novel.

The case is ultimately solved when Miss Marple sees through the method by which the perpetrators attempted to ensure they were cleared of suspicion shortly after the murder. Their tactics are very similar to those adopted in the first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles, and bear some relation to those used in Witness For The Prosecution, perhaps Christie’s best play. The plot is also nearly identical to that of Christie’s 1926 short story The Love Detectives, which featured Harley Quin as investigator.

The opening chapter includes a very useful map of St Mary Mead, and from this it can be seen that the location of Miss Marple’s house in relation to the vicarage and to Old Hall left her extremely well placed to observe goings on at the time of the murder.

The BBC television adaptation stars Paul Eddington, famous for his portrayal of Jim Hacker in sitcom Yes Minister, as the Rev Clement. The ITV adaptation, despite the scriptwriter feeling the need to include flashbacks to a young Miss Marple having an affair with a married man, is certainly one of the most watchable in that series. Tim McInnerny stars as Rev Clement and Rachael Stirling is superb as his flighty wife. The BBC version has a much more accurate portrayal of Inspector Slack, played by David Horovitch, than the ITV version, where Stephen Tompkinson takes the role.

The Body In The Library (1942)

In real time, a further 12 years would elapse before a second full-length Marple novel was published, however, we have reason to suspect that a much shorter period has elapsed in St Mary Mead time. At the very end of Murder At The Vicarage, Mrs Clement reveals that she is expecting a baby, and in the early stages of The Body In The Library her child is crawling around the house, in the absence of any other information we must assume that this is the same child. This apparent contraction of time goes some way towards explaining her extraordinarily long detective career, otherwise we are asked to believe that Jane Marple, already elderly when we first meet her in 1927, was still alive and well and sleuthing some 44 years later!

In the early Marple short stories we meet Colonel Arthur Bantry and Mrs Dolly Bantry, the owners of St Mary Mead’s largest house Gossington Hall. In these stories they discover Miss Marple’s detective prowess, so when the body of a mysterious blonde young woman is dumped in Gossington’s library, strangled to death, the Bantrys know exactly who to call. Mrs Bantry is especially keen to receive Miss Marple’s assistance, before the village rumour mill starts to suggest that she or her husband had anything to do with the crime. The subsequent investigation sees Miss Marple and Mrs Bantry cement what would become a lifelong friendship.

A body in the library of a large country house is of course one of the clichés of detective fiction. In the 1936 Poirot novel Cards On The Table, reference is made to Poirot’s crime author friend Ariadne Oliver as the author of a book called The Body In The Library! Agatha Christie’s twist on this is to make the library a highly conventional one, but to make the body wildly exotic. On viewing the body, Miss Marple exclaims ‘she’s not real’, a remark which would prove to be very significant.

The victim is soon identified as Ruby Keene, a young dance hostess at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth, on the coast 18 miles from St Mary Mead. Miss Marple and Mrs Bantry duly book in at the Majestic to pursue their investigations, and much of the subsequent action then takes place in Danemouth. Sir Henry Clithering, a retired Scotland Yard Commissioner who featured in several previous Miss Marple short stories, is enlisted by Miss Marple to try and get the official investigators to take her seriously. The murder of Ruby Keene is soon linked to the murder of Pamela Reeves, a local schoolgirl found in a burnt out car in a quarry near Danemouth.

As a novel in its own right, The Body In The Library deserves to be considered a Christie masterpiece, albeit one with a rather complex plot. However experienced readers of Christie’s work reading it for the first time may have seen similar tactics used to conceal a crime before. The tactics used by the murderers may be said to be a mirror image of those used in the Poirot novel of one year previously, Evil Under The Sun. The deception concerning the body also has echoes of the strategy adopted in the earlier Marple short story A Christmas Tragedy. There are certainly two people in the story who have a significant motive to murder Miss Keene, but did either, or both, actually have any opportunity to commit the crime?

Once again Miss Marple proves to have superior detective abilities than Inspector Slack. Recalling The Murder At The Vicarage early in the novel, Slack remarks how Miss Marple was able to solve that case due to her local knowledge, but incorrectly predicts ‘She’ll be out of her depth this time’.

Reflecting the fact that this is a very strongly plotted novel, both the BBC and ITV chose The Body In The Library to open their series of Marple screen adaptations. Joan Hickson had previously starred in the 1980 adaptation of Christie’s novel Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, and four years later, at the age of 78, she made her debut as Miss Marple. Christie of course never lived to see Hickson as Marple, but we may infer that the choice would have met with her approval, as when Hickson appeared in a 1946 stage production of the Poirot story Appointment With Death, Christie is reported to have said ‘I hope one day you will play my dear Miss Marple’. Fortunately Hickson was able to complete the last of the 12 Marple novels in 1992.

In 2003, Geraldine McEwan played Jane Marple for the first time in an ITV adaptation of the book. The dramatisation was infamous for the ‘lesbian twist’ applied to the solution, although now compared to some of the later modifications that would be used in this series, the change made here seems mild in comparison. As would be the case in many of the subsequent ITV Marples, comic actors or comedians played some of the more serious parts, here including Simon Callow as the Chief Constable and Ben Miller as local dandy Basil Blake. Joanna Lumley featured as Dolly Bantry.

The Moving Finger (1943)

One of Christie’s favourites, this novel is set in a small country town called Lymstock. A young man named Jerry Burton comes to live in Lymstock, with his sister Joanna, seeking some peace and quiet as he continues his rehabilitation from a flying accident.

A relaxing time is the last thing that Mr Burton, narrator of this novel, gets though. Shortly after his arrival he is shocked to receive a poison pen letter suggesting that Joanna and himself are not actually brother and sister. Mr Burton soon discovers that many such letters have been sent to residents of Lymstock.

Matters reach a head when the death by cyanide poisoning occurs of Mona Symington, wife of local solicitor Richard Symington. Mrs Symington had apparently committed suicide after receiving a particularly venomous letter. A short time later, the Symingtons’ maid Agnes Woddell is murdered, presumably because she knows the identity of the letter writer.

Miss Marple only appears late on in the story, after the deaths of Mrs Symington and Miss Woddell, after the vicar’s wife Maud Dane-Calthrop says she is going to call in an ‘expert’. Her expert does a fine job of course, but Miss Marple needs to set a risky trap for the criminal in order to provide definitive proof.

Psychological deduction is more usually associated with the Poirot novels, but here Miss Marple is able to draw significant deductions from the fact that all the allegations in the letters were false, and from the beautiful maid of the Symingtons, Elsie Holland, not receiving a letter. The phrase ‘No smoke without fire’ is uttered several times during the novel, and Miss Marple realises that the murderer has in fact managed to create a very clever ‘smokescreen’. There are certain echoes of the 1936 Poirot novel The ABC Murders here, although with one significant difference.

A Murder Is Announced (1950)

Miss Marple’s investigations take place this time in the village of Chipping Cleghorn, and once again she is staying with the local vicar and his wife. The Reverend Julian Harmon and his wife Diana (Bunch) provide hospitality to Miss Marple while she undergoes treatment at the Royal Spa Hotel in nearby Medenham Wells.

One day the village residents are surprised by an announcement in the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette:

‘A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29 at Little Paddocks at 6.30pm. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.’

At 6.30pm, a crowd of curious villagers has assembled at Little Paddocks, the house of a Miss Letitia Blacklock. The lights duly go out and a man appears shining a torch and shouting ‘Stick ‘em up’. At this stage some of those present are still saying things such as ‘How exciting’. However, the mood suddenly changes when two shots ring out and the intruder slumps to the ground. When the lights come back on, the dead intruder is quickly recognised as Rudi Scherz, a clerk at the Royal Spa Hotel who had recently paid a visit to Miss Blacklock. It is also soon discovered that Miss Blacklock has suffered a wound to her ear during the incident.

Miss Marple then enters the investigation, declaring somewhat brusquely to Detective Chief Inspector Craddock ‘A cheque. He altered it.’ It would seem that Scherz chose the wrong old lady to try and swindle! Miss Marple convinces the official investigators that Scherz was no more than a fall guy – that he didn’t have a gun with him and that the shots were actually fired by someone else in the house who snuck up behind him while he staged the sham hold-up. In later novels, Miss Marple would develop a close friendship with Inspector Craddock.

Miss Marple is unable to prevent two subsequent murders. Dora Bunner, an old school friend who now lives with Miss Blacklock, dies after taking some of Miss Blacklock’s painkillers, and Amy Murgatroyd is silenced after realising the significance of something she saw in the drawing room at Little Paddocks on the night of Scherz’s death. Miss Marple places great significance on Miss Murgatroyd’s final words ‘She wasn’t there, and particularly the emphasis placed on each of these words.

A Murder Is Announced is one of the Christie novels where quite audacious tricks are played on the reader concerning the names of certain characters. Much is made of the fact that there are people known as Pip and Emma who would appear to have a significant financial motive, and it is no surprise when Pip and Emma are revealed as characters who were introduced to the story early on. It is perhaps more difficult to guess the false identity that Emma is using, but when Pip is revealed, the reader is likely to feel somewhat annoyed at themselves for not guessing sooner. But are Pip and Emma the culprits?

This is undoubtedly a first-rate crime novel, widely regarded as one of the best Marple mysteries, however the murderer’s tactics echo those used in several other Christie works. The central plot device had already been used in the Poirot novel Peril At End House, and it would be used again in two 1960s Marple novels – The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side and At Bertram’s Hotel.

A Murder Is Announced had a successful run in the West End, and it remains a favourite of professional theatre companies and amateur dramatic societies to this day.

They Do It With Mirrors (1952)

Miss Marple is often portrayed by her author as being slightly dowdy and rather out of touch with modern trends. This is accentuated in the opening chapters of this novel as she meets Ruth Van Rydock, who many years ago attended finishing school with Jane Marple. Mrs Van Rydock asks of Miss Marple 'Have you seen what Christian Dior is trying to make us wear in the way of skirts?' This comment of course means nothing to Miss Marple! Mrs Van Rydock then expresses doubt that anyone would suspect that she and Miss Marple are the same age, although what that age might be is not stated.

Ruth then persuades Miss Marple to go and visit her sister, Carrie Louise Serrocold, as she is worried about her. Mrs Serrocold also attended the same finishing school, and like her sister she is also on to her third marriage, again of course a major difference from Miss Marple!

Shortly after her arrival, Miss Marple is given further reasons to be concerned about Mrs Serrocold. Then a heated argument is heard between Lewis Serrocold, Carrie Louise's husband, and Edgar Lawson, Mr Serrocold's secretary. Shots are fired, but no apparent harm results from their quarrel, but then it is discovered that Christian Gulbrandsen, brother of Mrs Serrocold's first husband, has been shot dead in another room at about the same time as the quarrel.

An actual mirror does not appear in the novel - the title is a lateral reference to how the first murder is committed. The use of the word 'they' in the title may also lead the reader to suspect that more than one person is involved. Besides the deception played at the time of the murder, one of the perpetrators has been performing another conjuring trick over an extended period of time, which provides a false motive for the killing of Mr Gulbrandsen.

Most of Christie's novels contain sufficient clues to allow the very astute reader to arrive at the solution. Sometimes, Mrs Christie supplies very significant clues and judges that the reader will not pick up on their significance. This certainly applies here, once you have reached the end of the book, go back to Chapter 7 and read the description of one of the criminals immediately after the quarrel, to see just how big a clue you were given.

Including the deaths of the murderers as they try and escape, five characters meet their death here, the highest body count of any Marple novel.

There is of course an excellent television adaptation of this novel starring Joan Hickson, and a passable version starring Julia McKenzie for ITV. But in spite of its stellar cast – including Bette Davis and John Mills as the Serrocolds – the 1985 Warner Brothers TV movie, under the American book title Murder With Mirrors, is best avoided.

A Pocketful Of Rye (1953)

Agatha Christie again looks to a nursery rhyme to provide her with the inspiration for this, her sixth Miss Marple title. Not long into the novel, business tycoon Rex Fortescue dies from taxine poisoning. In his pocket is found a quantity of rye, the first link the story makes with the nursery rhyme 'Sing A Song Of Sixpence'. Rex is murdered at his office, equivalent to the 'counting house' of the rhyme.

Rex is of course the Latin for king, so by extension his young wife Adele becomes the queen. The link with the rhyme continues as she dies 'in the parlour, eating bread and honey'.

Miss Marple, keeping up to date with the case via newspaper reports back in St Mary Mead, soon realises the link, and deduces that the maid will be next to die. To her horror, she realises that the maid at the Fortescue house is Gladys Martin, who was originally trained for service by Miss Marple.

A taxi is immediately summoned to take her to Yewtree Lodge, where the Fortescue family lives, but she arrives too late to prevent the death of Gladys, who was indeed murdered while 'in the garden, hanging out the clothes', and suffered the final indignity of having a clothes peg placed on her nose. The novel then sees Miss Marple try and identify the culprit to try and make good on her failure to prevent Gladys' death.

A Pocketful Of Rye is a hugely enjoyable crime novel, and although experienced Christie readers may be able to identify the culprit, the method by which their apparent alibi is broken is much harder to deduce. Miss Marple's previous knowledge of what Gladys would say in certain situations, and her experience of Gladys' trusting and credulous nature is key to her solving the mystery. The reader may be able to draw on the first Marple short story, The Tuesday Night Club, for assistance.

In the novel we hear how there is a person called Ruby MacKenzie who may bear ill will against Mr Fortescue. In a situation that has echoes of Pip and Emma in A Murder Is Announced, it is no surprise when Mrs MacKenzie is unmasked as a character who has been in the novel all along under a different name.

Taxine, which is derived from yew plants, is certainly one of the more unusual poisons Christie used to dispose of one of her characters, however it is by no means the most unusual.

There is one poignant final moment when Miss Marple returns to St Mary Mead after solving the case. She finds a letter with familiar handwriting, and opens it to discover that Gladys had written to her telling her about her concerns about happenings at Yewtree Lodge. The letter provides final proof of the murderer's identity, with Gladys signing off by saying of him 'You can see what a nice boy he is'.

Yewtree Lodge is reportedly modelled on Agatha Christie’s house at Sunningdale in Berkshire, where she lived in the 1920s. The ITV adaptation of this novel marked the debut as Miss Marple of Julia McKenzie. There is a strong case for saying that McKenzie's portrayal is the second best by any actress to date, although at times one gets the feeling that McKenzie is trying to do an impersonation of Joan Hickson, the definitive Miss Marple. The adaptation is one of the more faithful and more watchable in the ITV series, and includes a superb scene involving Prunella Scales as Ruby MacKenzie’s elderly mother.

4.50 from Paddington (1957)

This tale begins when Elspeth McGillicudy tells her friend Jane Marple that, while travelling by train, another train passed hers, on which a woman was being strangled to death. When no body comes to light on the train or on the track, the police dismiss the story, but undeterred, Miss Marple undertakes the train journey herself and realises that if the body had been pushed off the train at a particular point, it would have rolled down the embankment into the grounds of Rutherford Hall.

At this point we learn that Miss Marple has recently suffered a severe bout of pneumonia, and that her wealthy and extremely generous nephew Raymond West paid for one Lucy Eyelesbarrow to nurse her back to health.

Miss Eyelesbarrow is portrayed as the perfect nurse-housekeeper, and is such an engaging character that one wishes Agatha Christie had made use of her again in subsequent novels. However, in her only appearance, Lucy takes a job at Rutherford Hall, on Miss Marple’s direction, to search for the body.

Rutherford Hall is the residence of the Crackenthorpe family, and after oh-so-clever Lucy has discovered the body of the unfortunate woman seen on the train, two members of the Crackenthorpe family also suffer an untimely death. It would appear that their deaths are part of a desire on the part of the killer to increase his share in a ‘tontine’, an archaic method by which an estate was divided on death.

Miss Marple’s suspicions grow gradually, but it requires her to stage an elaborate charade, with the assistance of Mrs McGillicudy, in order for her to be sure.

Christie was often accused of not playing by the rules in novels such as The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd and Murder On The Orient Express. It is this writer’s opinion that while the solutions to these novels were certainly daring, Christie still played fair with the reader, in that sufficient clues were still provided. However, what occurs here is surely much more questionable, as a vital fact that provides the killer with their motive is withheld.

A version of 4.50 from Paddington, under the title Murder She Said, was the first of four Marple films made in the 1960s starring Margaret Rutherford, and the only one that would be based on a Marple novel. The second and third Rutherford films were loosely based on Poirot novels and the last was an original screenplay. These films seem to place the emphasis firmly on comedy rather than on detective drama, and Rutherford totally fails to convince as Marple. Agatha Christie was said to be delighted that these films were not a success, however she did become friends with Rutherford and would dedicate her next Marple novel, The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side, to Rutherford.

The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side (1962)

The title here is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott:

‘Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side;

The curse is come upon me;

Cried the Lady of Shalott

Dolly Bantry quotes, or rather misquotes, this poem to try and describe the frozen look seen on the face of actress Marina Gregg shortly before a murder took place. Mrs Bantry uses ‘doom’ instead of ‘curse’. This is the last of the St Mary Mead novels, although the action centres once again on Gossington Hall rather than the everyday life of the village.

In the early stages of the novel, we are told about how life in St Mary Mead has changed over the years. There is now a new housing development which has increased the village population significantly, and with it has come a new supermarket that Miss Marple finds extremely confusing. One of her ‘tea and scandal’ colleagues from Murder At The Vicarage, Miss Wetherby, has passed away, and Rev Leonard Clement has moved on from St Mary Mead – the new vicar is not named and plays no significant part until he supplies a vital piece of evidence near the end of the book which explains the ‘frozen look’ and leads Miss Marple to the solution.

Changes have also occurred in Miss Marple’s personal life, and not always for the best. She has had to surrender control of her beloved garden to a jobbing gardener. Considered too old to live alone by Dr Haydock, she also has a live-in housekeeper in the shape of the extremely irritating Miss Knight. Fortunately this situation changes for the better at the end of the book.

Significant changes have also occurred at Gossington Hall. We learn that Arthur Bantry has died, and that Dolly Bantry now lives in the Hall’s East Lodge. The Hall itself is now owned by a late middle-aged American actress called Marina Gregg and her husband Jason Rudd, a film director.

Whereas Gossington was merely used to dump a body in The Body In The Library, as many as four murders occur in the house this time – the last appears to be murder, but this is not certain. The first unfortunate victim is Heather Badcock, a resident of the village’s new housing development. Ms Gregg agrees to open up Gossington for a St John’s Ambulance fete, at which Mrs Badcock, secretary of the local St John’s association, dies after drinking a poisoned cocktail, one possibly intended for Ms Gregg.

We are told that Ms Gregg is making her comeback after several years away from the limelight due to a nervous breakdown. As the body count increases, it becomes increasingly obvious what the cause of her breakdown was.

The solution is a clever trick, but one that the experienced Christie reader will by now have little difficulty in spotting. The exact same method of murder was used 27 years earlier in the Poirot short story Triangle At Rhodes. The use of a startled look by one of the characters calls to mind Appointment With Death, and a few years later Christie would use it again in A Caribbean Mystery.

Inspector Craddock returns as official investigator here, and his relationship with Miss Marple is now so close that a visit to Miss Marple’s for tea is one of his first calls on being assigned the case. He even refers to Miss Marple’s house as ‘headquarters’.

This is one Christie novel where revelations of previously unknown family relationships are widespread. The last of these, occurring in the closing pages of the book, is widely regarded by Christie scholars as being one revelation too many, and wisely this twist has been dropped from all of the screen adaptations of this novel.

This is probably one of the best known Marple novels, as it has been the subject of three such adaptations. In 1980, the novel was adapted for cinema under the shortened title The Mirror Crack’d. Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple for the only time, and Dame Elizabeth Taylor played Marina Gregg. Dame Elizabeth is an apt choice for the part as Ms Gregg is an actress who has had several husbands and is past her prime, something which surely applied to her come 1980. The film is not cited as one of the highlights of her career, however her version of the ‘look of doom’ is a particularly fine piece of drama. Rock Hudson played Jason Rudd and James Fox featured as Inspector Craddock, in a film spoiled by the inclusion of a number of old jokes about the Hollywood film industry.

In 1992, at the age of 86, Joan Hickson brought the curtain down on her career as Miss Marple with an adaptation of this novel. She died six years later, and will be fondly remembered by Christie fans as the definitive Miss Marple. The ITV version of 2009 is one of the more watchable adaptations of Marple novels made by that channel.

A Caribbean Mystery (1964)

The last three Marple novels written all centre around Miss Marple on holiday, and this novel represents the only recorded instance of her leaving the United Kingdom. Raymond West has paid for her to have a relaxing holiday on the fictional Caribbean island of St Honore, as she continues her recuperation from illness.

Predictably, her stay turns out to be far from relaxing, as three people are murdered. The first to die is Major Palgrave, who only the previous day had offered to show Miss Marple what he claimed was a picture of a murderer, only to suddenly give a startled look and hurriedly put the photo away. Major Palgrave is described as being something of a bore, who is always telling one of a number of long-winded stories about crime he has encountered. Miss Marple is to regret not listening to the Major more carefully, as her failure to do so hinders her investigation significantly.

A Caribbean Mystery is not a Christie classic, but it does involve an ingenious modus operandum and a 'why didn't I see that?' solution. One of the killer's tactics would shortly be used again in the Poirot novel Third Girl, having already had a trial run in The Cretan Bull, one of the Labours of Hercules cases solved by Poirot. Miss Marple is assisted in identifying and apprehending the criminal by one Jason Rafiel, a wealthy fellow guest, and his staff. This novel would be the only occasion Mr Rafiel met Miss Marple, but not the last time he would have a major impact on one of her cases.

The Warner Brothers Television adaptation of this novel, dating from 1984, starred American actress Helen Hayes as Miss Marple for the second and last time and brought the curtain down on her extraordinary 75-year long acting career.

At Bertram's Hotel (1965)

Raymond West again treats his aunt, this time he allows her to stay at Bertram's Hotel in London, where we are told Miss Marple stayed as a girl. Almost immediately she senses something is not quite right. Miss Marple notices that nothing has changed in the many decades since her last visit, and the phrase 'too good to be true' is often repeated in the novel.

When elderly and confused hotel resident Cannon Pennefather is beaten over the head and subsequently found in a dazed state close to the location of a large train robbery, Miss Marple's suspicions that the hotel is the centre of a criminal operation are enhanced further. But who is the ringleader?

Despite using an ingenious method of committing a crime, At Bertram's Hotel fails to provide a compelling narrative. As in all full-length Marple or Poirot novels, a murder takes place, however here it occurs much later in the book than usual.

In his excellent book Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, John Curran describes the solution to one of the crimes as 'an even more breathtaking conspiracy than that of Murder on the Orient Express'. While there are echoes of that novel's main revelation, to suggest that Bertram's is anything other than a much inferior novel to Orient Express would be wrong.

The inspiration for Bertram's is claimed to be Brown's Hotel on Albemarle Street.

The BBC dramatised At Bertram's Hotel and cast George Baker as the police investigator. An ITV executive was sufficiently impressed to cast Baker as Ruth Rendell's detective Chief Inspector Wexford in a long running series of adaptations of Rendell's work.

Nemesis (1971)

Nemesis was the last Marple novel Christie wrote. Although 1976 would see the publication of Sleeping Murder, this title had in fact been written decades earlier. The Miss Marple we encounter in Nemesis is undoubtedly portrayed as being much older than the one in Sleeping Murder - in the opening chapters she wonders if she will live another 12 months - and although Miss Marple's death was never documented in the same way that Poirot's was, the fact that in Nemesis she receives financial reward for her services adds to the feeling of finality that pervades this book. Like many of Christie's later works, this is a 'murder in the past' novel.

While it seems likely that Poirot was handsomely rewarded for some of his cases, Miss Marple remained steadfastly an 'amateur sleuth', as opposed to Poirot's 'professional private detective'. It is never explicitly stated, but it is reasonable to assume that she undertook her sleuthing without the thought of a reward. However, all that changes when she is informed that Jason Rafiel, a key character from A Caribbean Mystery, has died and left her GBP 20,000 in his will on condition that she successfully solves a crime. In another example of 'Christie time' working slower than real time, we are told that Miss Marple met Mr Rafiel in the West Indies 'a year ago', yet A Caribbean Mystery was published some seven years before Nemesis.

Nemesis was the nickname Mr Rafiel gave to Miss Marple when she unmasked a killer at large in a hotel on a Caribbean island. Remembering her success, he asks her from beyond the grave to undertake another investigation. Initially she is given no indication of what the crime is, but she is asked to go on a Historic Homes & Gardens holiday coach tour. On arrival, Miss Marple is intrigued by some of her fellow passengers, and it soon transpires that several other people have also been invited at Mr Rafiel's behest.

At one of the stopping points on the tour, a resident of the local manor house approaches Miss Marple and invites her to stay, saying that Mr Rafiel had asked her to do so. It then quickly becomes clear that the crime Miss Marple is supposed to investigate is the murder of a local girl called Verity Hunt, who was engaged to Mr Rafiel's son Michael, and for which Michael is currently in prison. As so often in Christie novels involving investigations into past murders, another murder takes place in the present as a result of the investigations being re-opened.

Like Hallowe'en Party and another late period Poirot, Dead Man's Folly, Nemesis ventures into the area of child murder, although the motives for the murders of Verity Hunt and Nora Broad in this novel are entirely different from those uncovered by Poirot.

The end of the book sees Miss Marple explaining her conclusions at great length to a distinguished panel that includes the Home Secretary, and dreaming of 'marrons glaces' and 'visits to the opera' with her legacy.

Like Miss Marple, Christie was herself very elderly when writing this book, and several things related to the novel do not add up. Mr Rafiel had arranged for Elizabeth Temple and Professor Wanstead to go on the coach tour, and for the Bradbury-Scotts and Archdeacon Brabazon to meet Miss Marple during the tour, but how could he be sure that they would all keep their side of the bargain? Is it really realistic to expect to murder a moving target by rolling a rock down a hill? How do Miss Marple's 'guardian angels' know the exact time at which an attempt will be made on Miss Marple's life, and why, if he is so keen to see Michael's name cleared, does Mr Rafiel not specify the crime in question in his will?

For these reasons, as well as the fact that the field of suspects is limited, Nemesis is not a first-rate whodunnit. However, it still makes for compelling reading, if only as more of a tragic love story than a murder mystery.

Nemesis was adapted for the BBC with the usual skill. In this programme, Burgh Island Hotel in Devon features in the first few minutes as Mr Rafiel's house. Burgh Island was the setting for the novel And Then There Were None and both the novel and television adaptation of the Poirot mystery Evil Under The Sun. The ITV version of Nemesis, while having some merit as an original screenplay, is scarcely recognisable as an adaptation of Christie's work.

Sleeping Murder (1976)

This was the last Agatha Christie full-length novel to be published. Christie died on January 12 1976 at the age of 85, and was buried in the churchyard at Cholsey in Berkshire. In October that year this Marple novel, written several decades earlier, hit the shelves.

There is a widespread belief amongst Christie biographers that this title was written around 1940, at the same time as Christie wrote Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. However, the painstaking work of John Curran for Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, and the sequel Murder in the Making, has revealed that Christie was still planning this novel in 1948. As Curran points out, a close examination of the novel confirms the true date of writing, as there is a reference to the 1943 novel The Moving Finger and a quote about the war which implies that the war is over.

While Curtain depicts a very elderly and infirm Poirot, who dies before the end of the book, Sleeping Murder appears to feature a younger Miss Marple than some of the 1960s novels. The death of Miss Marple was never documented, and for reasons explained earlier we must regard Nemesis as her final case.

Once again we find Miss Marple accepting the hospitality of Raymond West. During a visit to the theatre to watch The Duchess Of Malfi, one of the party, a young woman called Gwenda Reed, married to Raymond’s cousin, screams and rushes out on hearing these words uttered by the character Ferdinand:

‘Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, she died young’.

Suddenly Gwenda has a vision of a young woman lying strangled in the hallway at Hillside, and a killer reciting these lines. Aided by Miss Marple, Gwenda soon discovers that she lived in the very same house for a short time when three years of age. This explains some of the earlier feelings of familiarity with the house, but also raises the chilling prospect that 18 years previously, a murder was committed at Hillside.

Gwenda and her husband Giles cannot resist the temptation to investigate, with Miss Marple in tow of course, but some of the things Gwenda learns about her family are extremely painful. The investigations also lead to a maid in the house at the time of the murder being silenced to prevent her telling what she knows.

There is of course one remarkable coincidence to swallow – that a young woman would return to the United Kingdom after 18 years and purchase the very same house she lived in as a child. However one feels that this is excusable on the grounds that the coincidence is the basis for an excellent novel.

John Curran’s investigations have also revealed that Christie’s original title for this novel was Cover Her Face. A likely reason for the change of title is that in the years between writing and publication, fellow crime writing legend P.D. James used this title.

Readers with knowledge of the Duchess of Malfi have a real advantage when it comes to identifying the killer.

This novel is the first of three occasions when Agatha Christie made use of a curious conversation. Gwenda visits a sanatorium during the course of her investigation, and there an old lady asks her ‘Is it your poor child, my dear?’, and goes on to suggest that there is a child’s body behind the fireplace.

This conversation would appear again in the 1961 novel The Pale Horse and it would form a significant part of the plot in the 1968 Tommy & Tuppence Beresford novel By The Pricking Of My Thumbs. (Of course in spite of its date of publication, Sleeping Murder was actually written well before these 1960s titles.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles Osborne: The Life and Crimes of Agatha ChristieAnne Hart: Agatha Christie's Miss MarpleJohn Curran: Agatha Christie's Secret NotebooksJohn Curran: Murder in the Making