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?