agatha christie marple murder at the vicarage

Just when I was really settling down to it, Lettice Protheroe drifted in. To give you a flavour of the man, take a look at his encounter with a young woman with the extraordinary name of Lettice, (which span my mind off into pointless speculation as to whether she has a sister called Kale or a brother called Chard), The vicar’s interior monologue is:

This, of course, makes him the perfect narrator, someone equipped to observe and understand what is going on while having little inclination to participate and an established habit of hoping for the best. He’s an intelligent, educated, observant, gentle man, not nearly as conventional as he believes his calling requires him to be yet he has preserved an innocence of spirit quite remarkable in a man of his age. I love the economy of effort and density of humour of this opening.

At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true. Griselda, as I have said, is much younger than I am. ‘And she always knows every single thing that happens-and draws the worst inferences from it.’

‘She’s the worst cat in the village,’ said Griselda. ‘‘Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Wetherby, Miss Hartnell, and that terrible Miss Marple. Griselda ticked them off on her fingers with a glow of virtue on her face. When the Vicar asks his wife, Griselda (a startlingly inappropriate name for such a spirited woman), how she’ll be spending the day, her reply triggers a wonderful foreshadowing of the presence of Miss Marple: The first scene opens with the primary narrator of the story, a rather put upon Vicar who is regretting marrying a very pretty woman, twenty years his junior and who lacks any of the qualities appropriate to a Vicar’s wife, pondering the appeal of the celibate life and trying to remember why he married this pretty young woman after knowing her for only twenty-four hours. I was completely wrong and I’m delighted to have been so. Perhaps it’s because I’ve only seen Miss Marple in TV series and in films but I expected her to be in the first scene in her first book, perhaps doing something punitive to delinquent plants in her garden while noting, out of the side of her eye, the arrival of a strange car at the vicarage. Sparkling virtual locked room mystery, filled with benevolent humour and illuminated by the first appearance of the formidable Miss Marple.

Agatha christie marple murder at the vicarage