‘My dear young man, you underestimate the detective instinct of village life. In St. Mary Mead everyone knows your most intimate affairs. There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.’
(The vicar, Leonard Clement, explaining village life to Lawrence Redding, the artist, Chapter 4)

‘You must understand that I heard this on the best authority.’ In St. Mary Mead the best authority is always somebody else’s servant.
(Clement’s droll sense of humour, Chapter 25)

‘Anyway, I don’t think Mr Raymond West is so frightfully clever as he pretends to be.’
‘Very few of us are,’ I said. (Chapter 25)

Introducing Miss Marple

This is the first Agatha Christie novel to feature Miss Jane Marple, who would go on to appear in 20 short stories and 11 further novels.

Miss Marple always sees everything. Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.
(Clement, the narrator)

‘Miss Marple may be mistaken.’
‘She never is. That kind of old cat is always right.’
(Griselda on Miss M.)

‘Confound the woman, she couldn’t know more about it if she had committed the murder herself.’ (Chief Constable Melchett)

‘I’m afraid that observing human nature for as long as I have done, one gets not to expect very much from it.’
(The lady herself)

One of the pleasures of this unusually long detective novel is watching Miss Marple grow into the character of ‘Miss Marple’, as Christie gets the bit between her teeth.

Leonard Clement

‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ is a first-person narrative told by Leonard ‘Len’ Clement, the vicar of a little village, St Mary Mead, in the fictional county of Downshire (Chapter 12). Christie obviously had fun striking what you could call a hesitant, mildly disapproving, vicarly tone right from the start.

It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage. (Opening sentence)

It’s this reasonable, educated but self-deprecating tone and personality which dominate and define the text.

When I got back to the Vicarage I was my usual faded, indeterminate self… (Chapter 26)

‘Faded, indeterminate’ Clement is married to Griselda, younger than him, attractive but flirtatiously playful.

Griselda is nearly twenty years younger than myself. She is most distractingly pretty and quite incapable of taking anything seriously. She is incompetent in every way, and extremely trying to live with. She treats the parish as a kind of huge joke arranged for her amusement. I have endeavoured to form her mind and failed. (Chapter 1)

Years later, Griselda remains proud of seducing the vicar in just 24 hours:

‘I’m everything you most dislike and disapprove of, and yet you couldn’t withstand me!… I make you frightfully uncomfortable and stir you up the wrong way the whole time, and yet you adore me madly.’ (Chapter 1)

Unimpressed with Clement’s staidness and devotion to duty etc, she playfully threatens him with having an affair with the young artist, Lawrence Redding, who’s come to the village and set up his studio in a shed in the vicarage’s grounds, and is painting a portrait of Griselda.

‘You don’t deserve me. You really don’t. I’ll have an affair with the artist. I will — really and truly. And then think of the scandal in the parish.’ (Chapter 1)

Living with Clement and Griselda are his 16-year-old nephew, Dennis, and their brusque and incompetent maid, Mary.

It is repeatedly stated how innocent and unworldly Clement is, so much so that I did wonder whether this was a blind and whether there would turn out to be the same kind of twist as in ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’.

‘Ah! well, sir,’ he said tolerantly, ‘you’re a clergyman. You don’t know half of what goes on.’
(Chapter 17)

‘She has been ill,’ I said mildly.
‘Ill? Fiddlesticks. You’re too unworldly, Mr Clement.’
(Chapter 25)

The murderee

In Chapter 5 Clement comes home to discover the loud and unpopular Colonel Protheroe dead in his (Clement’s) study, shot through the back of the head as he sat at his (Clement’s) writing desk writing a note. Protheroe is the lord of the manor, local magistrate, who lived up at the Old Hall with his daughter, Lettice, and second wife, Anne, and is notorious for his loud-mouthed, boorish insensitivity. So who shot him? And why?

The cast

In the first four chapters leading up to the murder, Christie introduces an impressive number of characters and gives at least five of them plausible motives for committing the murder. Part of this is done by a tea party Griselda arranges for the four village gossips (or ‘old cats’ as Miss Cram calls them), four old ladies one of whom is Miss Marple and from whom she is, to begin with, indistinguishable. Only slowly but steadily does she emerge as a kind of super-sleuth in his own right.

Here’s a complete list of characters. I’ve added M for motive to the characters with obvious motives to kill Colonel Protheroe.

• Leonard Clement the vicar – the modest, disapproving narrator; ‘Nobody would suspect you of anything, darling,’ said Griselda. ‘You’re so transparently above suspicion’
• Griselda – Clement’s carefree, playful young wife, who enjoys teasing Clement that she’s being wooed by Lawrence Redding the painter who’s doing her portrait
• Dennis – Clement’s 16-year-old schoolboy nephew, jokey and playful
• Mary Adams – their rude maid, a notoriously bad cook
• Hawes – the new curate, only arrived three weeks ago (suspicious!), has High Church views and fasts on Fridays
• Colonel Lucius Protheroe – grumpy local squire and JP, opponent of ritual in church (so opposed to Hawes), ‘the kind of man who enjoys making a fuss on every conceivable occasion’. He disapproves of his daughter Lettice posing for the young artist Lawrence Redding in just her bathing suit. According to Griselda both his wife and his daughter are fed up to the back teeth with him. In fact his first wife couldn’t bear him and ran off. As local magistrate he has just sentenced 3 poachers, one of whom swore vengeance.
• Lettice Protheroe – ‘a pretty girl, very tall and fair and completely vague’. She casually implicates herself when she tells Clement: ‘If only I had some money I’d go away, but without it I can’t. If only father would be decent and die… if he doesn’t want me to want him to die, he shouldn’t be so horrible over money.’ Lettice, in her vague, wishy-washy way, thinks she’s in love with the artist Lawrence Redding. M
• Mrs Ann Protheroe, the Colonel’s second wife and Lettice’s step-mother. Protheroe married her five years ago. Clement is astonished to enter the artist’s studio one afternoon to discover her in a passionate embrace with the artist Redding. He backs out and a few minutes later she comes to his study to apologise but explain that she’s living a life of perfect misery with Protheroe and is desperate for change. Clement comments: ‘She impressed me now as a very desperate woman, the kind of woman who would stick at nothing once her emotions were aroused. And she was desperately, wildly, madly in love with Lawrence Redding, a man several years younger than herself.’ M
• Lawrence Redding – handsome 30-year-old artist visiting the village and staying in the vicarage grounds. After dinner at the Vicarage he tells Clement he is sincerely in love with Ann Protheroe, he wants to rescue her from her tyrant husband, and wishes Protheroe were dead: ‘Oh! I didn’t mean I was going to stick him in the back with a knife, though I’d offer my best thanks to anyone else who did so…’ M
• Mrs Price Ridley – one of the village’s gossipy old ladies, ‘a devout and fussy member of my congregation’
  • Clara, her maid, aged 19
• Miss Wetherby – another old lady, ‘a mixture of vinegar and gush’
• Miss Hartnell – another old lady, ‘weather-beaten and jolly and much dreaded by the poor’. ‘It is difficult with Miss Hartnell to know where narrative ends and vituperation begins.’
• Miss Marple – fourth of the quartet of village ladies, but Clement realises she is sharper than the others and will, of course, go on to a career in the later books and stories. According to Clement she is ‘a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner’. According to ever-critical Griselda, ‘that terrible Miss Marple’ is ‘the worst cat in the village’. Clement admits that she spies on everyone under cover of birdwatching.
• Mrs Estelle Lestrange – an outsider, recently arrived in the village, taken a house for the summer, bit mysterious, ‘a cultured woman who knew something of Church history and architecture’
  • ‘She was a very tall woman. Her hair was gold with a tinge of red in it. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were dark, whether by art or by nature I could not decide. If she was, as I thought, made up, it was done very artistically. There was something Sphinxlike about her face when it was in repose and she had the most curious eyes I have ever seen — they were almost golden in shade’
  • ‘She was a curious woman — a woman of very strong magnetic charm’
• Estelle has some kind of dark secret which she can’t bring herself to reveal to Clement (‘No, I don’t think anyone can help me. But thank you for offering to do so’), who goes away from a visit to her rented cottage thinking: ‘This woman would stick at nothing’. And then we learn that she visited the Colonel on a mysterious errand the day before the murder. Will she turn out to have some hidden connection with Protheroe? M
• Dr Stone – a well-known archæologist who has recently come to stay at the Blue Boar while he superintends the excavation of an ancient barrow situated on Colonel Protheroe’s property. A ‘bald-headed dull old man’, ‘He was a little man. His head was round and bald, his face was round and rosy, and he beamed at you through very strong glasses he is known to have had a big argument with Protheroe about something to do with his project. Does that make him a suspect? M
• Dr Stone’s secretary, Miss Gladys Cram – ‘Miss Cram is a healthy young woman of twenty-five, noisy in manner, with a high colour, fine animal spirits and a mouth that always seems to have more than its full share of teeth’. The old ladies (above) disapprove of an unmarried young woman staying in the same inn (the Blue Boar) as Dr Stone, who is married but visiting without his wife. Could they be having an affair? If Stone had anything to do with Protheroe’s death, would Miss Cram protect him?
• Dr Haydock – local GP, ‘a good fellow, a big, fine, strapping man with an honest, rugged face’, called by Clement as soon as the latter discovers the body in his study.
• Constable Hurst – village policeman, telephoned by Dr Haydock as soon as the latter ascertains that Protheroe is dead.
• Inspector Slack – ‘a dark man, restless and energetic in manner, with black eyes that snapped ceaselessly.’ ‘His manner was rude and overbearing in the extreme.’ A ‘conceited ass’ according to Dr Haydock.
• Colonel Melchett – Chief Constable of the county, ‘a dapper little man with a habit of snorting suddenly and unexpectedly. He has red hair and rather keen bright blue eyes.’ Patronising: ‘There’s a lot of talk. Too many women in this part of the world.’
• Archer – the poacher Protheroe sentenced to jail and who threatened him with revenge. He has been walking out with Clement’s slovenly maid, Mary. This means that she, the maid Mary, joins the list of possible suspects. M
• Manning – Protheroe’s chauffeur, ‘a nice lad, not more than twenty-five or six years of age’
• Dr Roberts – the coroner
• Cherubim – the village chemist
• Staff at Old Hall:
  • Mrs Simmons – the housekeeper
  • Mrs Pratt – the cook
  • Rose – a main, ‘a pretty girl of twenty-five’
  • Gladys – the kitchenmaid
• Mrs Sadler — Hawes’s landlady

As you can see, some are Direct Suspects, having explicitly stated they want Protheroe out of the way, being: his daughter who wants his money; his wife who finds living with him unbearable; Redding who wants him out of the way so he can pursue his affair with Ann Protheroe.

Could Dr Stone be added to this list because of the alleged row he had with Protheroe? He’s not in the same category as the Direct Suspects.

Then there are the Indirect Suspects who have no known connection with Protheroe but are suspicious presences who’ve been behaving oddly, of whom Mrs Lestrange is the leading example.

Details

The reader notices how, in the first four chapters, Christie introduces and sketches an impressive number of characters. Less obvious is the way she introduces lots of circumstantial details. What happens in the novel – as in life, I imagine – is that the moment the murder is discovered, scores of tiny details which had up until that moment been just part of the forgettable stuff of everyday life, suddenly become immensely important.

For example, Protheroe had an appointment to meet the vicar at 6.15 or so but they’d delayed their appointment while chatting in the village high street. Could someone have overheard? Just before 6, Clement was called away to attend Abbott, a parishioner who was dying but when he got there he found the man well, and none of his household had made the call? So who did, presumably to get him away from the vicarage so they could commit the crime?

Similarly, the clock on the study table was knocked over, smashed and stopped at the moment of death, frozen at 6.22pm. But as Clement tries to tell the Inspector, he always keeps it set 15 minutes too fast in a bid to outwit his own tardiness. So much is made of the time and this discrepancy, that I’d bet it turns out to be a vital clue.

And at dinner the evening before, conversation had turned to the subject of guns and Redding the artist had admitted to owning a .25 Mauser pistol, a souvenir from the war. So when the police identify the bullet which killed Protheroe as coming from a Mauser .25 it seems an open and shut case. Especially as in the few minutes before he returned to the vicarage, Clement had encountered Redding just outside the building looking white as a sheet, talking and behaving oddly, then running off.

Next morning everyone discovers that later the evening of the crime, at 10pm, Redding turned himself into the police, handed over the gun and confessed that he did it. So he was charged and locked up, news which travels like wildfire through the village.

But the reader of any detective story knows this is too simple and obvious – and also too early in the story: the real motive is likely to be much more convoluted and the real killer a well-hidden secret.

Anyway, as with my other Christie reviews, I’ll stop my summary here because it’s always at this point that her detective stories metamorphose from a description of events into an increasingly complicated labyrinth of competing theories. Not only do the police have theories about whodunnit, but so do all the main characters – Miss Marple starts her involvement by telling an astonished Clement she can think of no fewer than seven suspects:

‘Quite that, I should think,’ said Miss Marple absently. ‘I expect every one of us suspects someone different.’ (Chapter 26)

And the plot is carefully constructed so that over the next 200 pages or so, a steady trickle of new clues and revelations are released, which disprove some theories, support others, or provide evidence for entirely new ones. As a disgruntled Inspector Slack says, in a phrase which could be the motto of all her books:

‘You can’t get definite proof of anything in this crime! It’s theory, theory, theory.’ (Chapter 25)

And Christie has her characters themselves comment on the depth and complexity of the thing:

‘Do you know, Clement,’ [Colonel Melchett] said suddenly, ‘I’ve a feeling that this is going to turn out a much more intricate and difficult business than any of us think. Dash it all, there’s something behind it.’ (Chapter 12)

And:

‘You know,’ I said to Griselda, ‘I don’t feel we are really at the end of this case yet.’
‘You mean not till someone has really been arrested?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean that there are ramifications, under-currents, that we know nothing about. There are a whole lot of things to clear up before we get at the truth.’ (Chapter 22)

And:

‘To tell you the truth,’ I said, as I fetched her shawl, ‘the whole thing seems to me a bewildering maze.’ (Chapter 26)

Right up till the final revelation which overthrows the whole lot of them in a dazzling denouement.

Maps

To help the reader the text contains a map of the village and a sketch of the vicarage, just some of the fleet of details the narrative is packed with.

And:

It is an entertainment designed to puzzle, tease and amuse the reader. Trying to summarise these convolutions and complexities would be a fool’s errand.

Miss Marple’s approach

Slowly at first, Miss Marple begins to share, in a quiet and understated way, her thoughts about the murder which, as they accumulate through the story, grow into a worldview and a methodology.

Motive and opportunity The basics of all detective work.

‘Motive and opportunity.’ (Chapter 30)

All the facts must be accounted for If anything is not accounted for by your theory, pause it.

‘I know, dear Mr Clement, that there are many ways we prefer to look at things. But one must actually take facts as they are, must one not? And it does not seem to me that the facts bear the interpretation you put upon them.’ (Chapter 6)

‘The point is,’ she said, ‘that one must provide an explanation for everything. Each thing has got to be explained away satisfactorily. If you have a theory that fits every fact — well, then, it must be the right one. But that’s extremely difficult.’ (Chapter 26)

‘One’s own belief — even so strong as to amount to knowledge — is not the same as proof. And unless one has an explanation that will fit all the facts (as I was saying to dear Mr Clement this evening) one cannot advance it with any real conviction.’ (Chapter 30)

‘I thought you were going to say something, my dear. And it is often so much better to let things develop on their own lines.’ (Chapter 6)

Suspect everyone Her spinster scepticism, or cynicism.

‘One never can be quite sure about anyone, can one? At least that’s what I’ve found.’ (Chapter 9)

‘Ah!’ said Miss Marple. ‘But I always find it prudent to suspect everybody just a little. What I say is, you really never know, do you?’ (Chapter 16)

‘But Mrs Clement was completely out of it,’ interrupted Melchett. ‘She returned by the 6.50 train.
‘That’s what she said,’ retorted Miss Marple. ‘One should never go by what people say.’ (Chapter 30)

Intuition

‘That is a very sound way of arriving at the truth. It’s really what people call intuition and make such a fuss about. Intuition is like reading a word without have to spell it out. A child can’t do that because it has had so little experience. But a grown-up person knows the word because they’ve seen it often before.’ (Chapter 11)

Noticing details

They realised, you see, that I am a noticing kind of person… (Chapter 30)

I don’t know whether Miss Marple had any inkling of all this. Very probably she had. Few things are hidden from her. (Chapter 30)

‘It is,’ she said, ‘a Peculiar Thing. Another Peculiar Thing.’ (Chapter 21)

A phrase she repeats several times to describe noteworthy anomalies.

Becoming Miss Marple

On one level the entire novel is about her flexing her wings and growing into the role of ‘Miss Marple’. One by one, she overcomes the scepticism of the men, the vicar being the first to realise her qualities.

I stared at the old lady, feeling an increased respect for her mental powers. (Chapter 11)

I was silent, but I did not agree with him. I was quite sure that Anne Protheroe had had no pistol with her since Miss Marple had said so. Miss Marple is not the type of elderly lady who makes mistakes. She has got an uncanny knack of being always right. (Chapter 12)

For all her fragile appearance, Miss Marple is capable of holding her own with any policeman or Chief Constable in existence. (Chapter 9)

Now how did the woman know that I had been to visit Mrs Lestrange that afternoon? The way she always knows things is uncanny. (Chapter 16)

I have a poor sense of time myself (hence the keeping of my clock fast) and Miss Marple, I should say, has a very acute one. Her clocks keep time to the minute and she herself is rigidly punctual on every occasion. (Chapter 23)

In the art of seeing without being seen, Miss Marple had no rival… (Chapter 23)

Of all the ladies in my congregation, I consider her by far the shrewdest. Not only does she see and hear practically everything that goes on, but she draws amazingly neat and apposite deductions from the facts that come under her notice. (Chapter 26)

There is always some perfectly good and reasonable explanation for Miss Marple’s omniscience… (Chapter 26)

Others’ opinion:

REDDING: You know, old Miss Marple knows a thing or two.
CLEMENT: She is, I believe, rather unpopular on that account. (Chapter 19)

‘She has a powerful imagination and systematically thinks the worst of everyone.’
‘The typical elderly spinster, in fact,’ said Melchett, with a laugh. (Chapter 9)

And the way she deploys her Spinster Cynicism to comic effect against the pompous men.

‘I’m afraid there’s a lot of wickedness in the world. A nice honourable upright soldier like you doesn’t know about these things, Colonel Melchett.’ (Chapter 9)

Triumph

All leading to the final two chapters where Miss Marple turns out to have a sounder grasp of events, character and human psychology than all the male characters put together.

There was something fascinating in Miss Marple’s resumé of the case. She spoke with such certainty that we both felt that this way and in no other could the crime have been committed. (Chapter 30)

Reading her triumph over the pompous cops and obtuse vicar is deeply enjoyable, even thrilling. She triumphs and her character is a triumph. No wonder Christie realised she’d struck gold and would go on to develop the character at length over many years to come.

Sexism

It was a hundred years ago in a country unrecognisable from modern Britain, so you might wonder why I even bother collecting the examples of the male characters’ everyday sexism except that it’s easy and amusing. Bombastic Colonel Melchett is the chief offender:

‘There’s a lot of talk. Too many women in this part of the world.’ (Chapter 7)

‘Women never like fiddling about with firearms. Arsenic’s more in their line.’ (Chapter 12)

Then there’s rude, dismissive Inspector Slack:

‘Mrs Protheroe acted in an exactly similar fashion, remember, Slack.’
That’s different. She’s a woman, and women act in that silly way. I’m not saying she did it for a moment. She heard he was accused and she trumped up a story. I’m used to that sort of game. You wouldn’t believe the fool things I’ve known women do…’ (Chapter 11)

‘Women cause a lot of trouble,’ moralised the inspector. (Chapter 25)

Self-important Constable Hurst:

‘You can’t take any notice of what old ladies say. When they’ve seen something curious, and are waiting all eager like, why, time simply flies for them. And anyway, no lady knows anything about time.’ (Chapter 23)

Even the vicar narrator, otherwise so sympathetic to everyone:

Melchett is a wise man. He knows that when it is a question of an irate middle-aged lady, there is only one thing to be done — to listen to her. When she has said all that she wants to say, there is a chance that she will listen to you. (Chapter 23)

‘Why,” I said, ‘I remember at the time Mrs Protheroe said it wasn’t like her husband’s handwriting at all, and I took no notice.’
‘Really?’
‘I thought it one of those silly remarks women will make.’ (Chapter 27)

Miss Marple herself makes a contribution:

‘My dear Colonel Melchett, you know what young women are nowadays. Not ashamed to show exactly how the creator made them.’ (Chapter 9)

Griselda:

‘I do hate old women — they tell you about their bad legs and sometimes insist on showing them to you.’ (Chapter 17)

Two points. 1) Whenever I read this kind of thing, it reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s powerful feminist tract Three Guineas which gathers an impressive array of evidence testifying to the universality of chauvinist, sexist, patronising, patriarchal attitudes throughout British society.

2) Then again, the entire book is a tissue of clichés and stereotypes (the handsome young artist, the reactionary old colonel, the lonely wife, the alienated daughter, the otherworldly vicar, the conservative chief constable – ‘all this namby-pambyism annoys me. I’m a plain man’ – and so on) so that most of the characters very much espouse, approve and express the received ideas of the day.

a) This makes them recognisable and assimilable by the great majority of readers i.e. they’re not high-falutin’ artists and psychological experimenters like the characters in Joyce or Lawrence or Woolf.

b) At a deeper level, the detective story as a genre requires most if not all of its characters to be stereotyped and predictable in order to function: if they were all unpredictable the thing would be as chaotic and unreadable as real life actually is; but if the majority of the characters are staid, recognisable and predictable it allows the reader to assimilate them, to register them and their values and be alert to the discrepancies and oddities which characterise real clues and (might) indicate the identity of the murderer.

Summary of sexism

‘They’re not doing so badly,’ I said. ‘One of them, at all events, thinks she’s got there.’
‘Our friend, Miss Marple, eh?’
‘Our friend, Miss Marple.’
‘Women like that always think they know everything,’ said Colonel Melchett.
(Chapter 27)

Colonel Melchett’s remark contains the implicit assumption that only men are allowed to think they know everything. Except that in this case, Miss Marple does know everything. She is The Spinster’s Revenge against the everyday chauvinism of men like Colonel Melchett.

Cats

A word means how it is used. Christie is fond of using ‘cat’ to mean gossiping, bitchy woman.

‘I rather like Miss Marple,’ I said. ‘She has, at least, a sense of humour.’
‘She’s the worst cat in the village,’ said Griselda. (Chapter 1)

‘Nasty old cat,’ said Griselda, as soon as the door was closed. (Chapter 3)

CLEMENT: Miss Marple may be mistaken.
GRISELDA: She never is. That kind of old cat is always right. (Chapter 3)

MISS CRAM: A girl wants a bit of life out of office hours, and except for you, Mrs Clement, who is there in the place to talk to except a lot of old cats? (Chapter 10)

‘She’d make a very good mannequin,’ said Griselda. ‘She’s got such a lovely figure.’ There’s nothing of the cat about Griselda. (Chapter 10)

‘Serve the old cat right,’ he [Dennis] exclaimed. ‘She’s got the worst tongue in the place.’ (Chapter 14)

MISS CRAM: Just because one of these gossiping old cats has nothing better to do than look out of her window all night you go and pitch upon me. (Chapter 25)

Shot

While I’m in the business of collecting quotes to make points, I noticed how Christie strategically threads the word ‘shot’ throughout the narrative. Obviously it mostly appears in the literal sense, when referring to the shot that killed Colonel Protheroes – but on a few other occasions it’s slipped in in a metaphorical sense, a few times before the murder takes place to anticipate it and a few times afterwards, giving a slight echoing, ringing repetition, which keeps the idea and sound of the one gunshot subliminally in the reader’s mind.

Proleptic (looking forward):

A ribald rhyme concocted by Dennis shot through my head. (Chapter 2)

That last Parthian shot went home. (Chapter 2)

Analeptic (looking back):

He was pacing up and down nervously, and when I entered the room he started as though he had been shot. (Chapter 24)

Bookish

Every Christie novel I’ve read so far contains multiple ironic, knowing references to the genre the story is in, detective stories:

‘It’s so mysterious, isn’t it, her arriving like this and taking a house down here, and hardly every going outside it? Makes one think of detective stories. You know — “Who was she, the mysterious woman with the pale, beautiful face? What was her past history? Nobody knew. There was something faintly sinister about her.” I believe Dr Haydock knows something about her.’
‘You read too many detective stories, Griselda,’ I observed mildly.
(Chapter 1)

And:

‘If this were only a book,’ he [Lawrence] said gloomily, ‘the old man [Protheroe] would die — and a good riddance to everybody.’ (Chapter 4)

And:

‘I see,’ I said, ‘that you are that favourite character of fiction, the amateur detective. I don’t know that they really hold their own with the professional in real life.’ (Chapter 16)

And:

‘You’ve been reading G. K. Chesterton,’ I said, and Lawrence did not deny it. (Chapter 16)

And:

‘I wonder,’ I said. ‘I think each one of us in his secret heart fancies himself as Sherlock Homes.’ (Chapter 26)

And:

‘I have been reading a lot of American detective stories from the library lately,’ said Miss Marple, ‘hoping to find them helpful.’ (Chapter 27)

And:

‘There is, I believe, an invention called a Maxim silencer. So I gather from detective stories.’ (Chapter 30)

And:

GRISELDA: I was — well, absolutely silly about him [Redding] at one time. I don’t mean I wrote him compromising letters or anything idiotic like they do in books. But I was rather keen on him once. (Chapter 24)

And:

‘I know that in books it is always the most unlikely person. But I never find that rule applies in real life.’ (Chapter 31)

The excitable schoolboy Dennis is a special case:

At Dennis’s age a detective story is one of the best things in life, and to find a real detective story, complete with corpse, waiting on one’s own front doorstep, so to speak, is bound to send a healthy-minded boy into the seventh heaven of enjoyment. (Chapter 6)

So when a murder mystery occurs right on his doorstep, Dennis is delighted:

‘Fancy being right on the spot in a murder case,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve always wanted to be right in the midst of one.’ (Chapter 6)

And sets off with a magnifying glass to look for clues which he helpfully gives to Inspector Slack who politely thanks him, pockets them and forgets all about them.

This chimes with the gleeful delight of the two children in ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ who are thrilled to bits that a real-life murder has been committed at their house. This is a bit more profound than the simple comedy: it’s as if every novel contains a reminder that, although a murder is a tragedy to the victim and those closest to him or her, at even a small remove it’s an exciting relief from routine and boredom, and at one more remove, in the newspapers or other media, it’s just one more item in the news.

All these bookish references are trumped when Miss M’s nephew, Mr Raymond West, arrives on a visit and turns out to be a famous writer.

‘Raymond gets up very late — I think writers often do. He writes very clever books, I believe, though people are not really nearly so unpleasant as he makes out. Clever young men know so little of life, don’t you think?’ (Chapter 17)

The odd thing about him is how little part he plays in the story – after a few scenes and bits of dialogue he more or less disappears. Maybe an indication that Christie introduced just a few more characters, complications and red herrings than the story could actually bear. Who cares? It’s the book’s fecundity, its sense of being full to the brim and then overflowing with characters and sub-plots which makes it so enjoyable.

Butlers

I imagine many scholars will have written papers about Christie’s butlers, valets and servants, such as Poirot’s man, George or the three different butlers in ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’. They are always a comic joy.

A very correct butler opened the door, with just the right amount of gloom in his bearing.
(Chapter 8)

Last word

Last word goes to the irrepressible Miss Marple. Here she is talking to the vicar narrator:

‘I remember a saying of my Great Aunt Fanny’s. I was sixteen at the time and thought it particularly foolish.’
‘Yes?’ I inquired.
‘She used to say: “The young people think the old people are fools; but the old people know the young people are fools!”‘
(Chapter 31)

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Credit

‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in 1930.

Related links

• The Murder at the Vicarage online
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• 1930s reviews