by John Curran
The Murder at the Vicarage
13 October 1930
* * *
When unpopular churchwarden Colonel Protheroe is found shot in the vicar’s study in St Mary Mead, the vicar’s neighbour identifies seven potential murderers. Two confessions, an attempted suicide and a robbery confuse the issue but Miss Marple understands everything when she realises the significance of the potted palm.
* * *
The Murder at the Vicarage was the first Agatha Christie title issued under the new Crime Club imprint, and the first book-length investigation for Miss Marple. It appeared in serial form in the USA three months before its UK publication, leading to the conclusion that the bulk of the novel was completed during 1929. Disappointingly, Christie writes in her Autobiography that ‘I cannot remember where, when or how I wrote it, why I came to write it or even what suggested to me that I should select a new character – Miss Marple.’ She goes on to explain that the enjoyment she got from the creation of the Caroline Sheppard character in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was a factor in the decision to re-create an ‘acidulated spinster, full of curiosity, knowing everything, hearing everything; the complete detective service in the home’. The character of Miss Marple in The Murder at the Vicarage is considerably different from the Miss Marple of her next case 12 years later, The Body in the Library.
Jane Marple made her first appearance in print in a series of six short stories published between December 1927 and May 1928 in the Royal Magazine, beginning with ‘The Tuesday Night Club’. A further six stories were published between December 1929 and May 1930 in The Story-Teller and all 12 were published, with the addition of ‘Death by Drowning’, as The Thirteen Problems in June 1932. In the first story Miss Marple sits in her house in St Mary Mead, dressed completely in black – black brocade dress, black mittens and black lace cap – in the big grandfather chair, knitting and listening and solving crimes that have baffled the police. She is described as ‘smiling gently’ and having ‘benignant and kindly’ blue eyes. But the first description we receive of her, from the vicar’s wife, Griselda, in The Murder at the Vicarage is ‘that terrible Miss Marple . . . the worst cat in the village’. The vicar himself, while describing her as ‘a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner’, also concedes that ‘she is much more dangerous’ than her fellow parishioner the gushing Miss Wetherby. He captures the essence of Miss Marple when he states in Chapter 4 that ‘There’s no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.’ By 1942 and The Body in the Library, Miss Marple has cast off, temporarily at least, both St Mary Mead and her black lace mittens to accompany Dolly Bantry to the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth to solve the murder of Ruby Keene. And thereby to join the company of the Great Detectives.
The Murder at the Vicarage has its origins in the Messrs Satterthwaite and Quin short story ‘The Love Detectives’, published in December 1926 in The Storyteller magazine. Here two adulterous lovers commit murder and then confess separately, confident in the knowledge that if they make the ‘confessions’ incredible enough (they each claim to have used different and incorrect weapons), neither of them will be believed. In both short story and novel the victim is the husband, and the killers are his wife and her lover. Significantly, in each case a stopped clock causes confusion as to the time of death. The novel adapts the motive, the means and the device of false confessions, adds extra suspects and replaces the duo of Satterthwaite and Quin with Miss Marple; but they are, essentially, the same story.
The notes for The Murder at the Vicarage are all contained in Notebook 33 and consist of 70 very organised pages that closely follow the progress of the novel. For the early chapters the chapter number is included; thereafter the remainder of the notes follow the novel in chronological order. There is little in the notebook that is not included in the published version. Two maps of St Mary Mead are included and the rest of Notebook 33 contains the draft for Three Act Tragedy.
From Notebook 33 Christie’s own sketch of St Mary Mead for The Murder at the Vicarage showing most of the locations that appear in that novel.
For some reason, the notes for The Murder at the Vicarage begin at Chapter 3; there is no record anywhere of the first two chapters. The extracts below have been edited for clarity.
Chapter III
Griselda and Vicar – Vicar meets Mrs L[estrange] at Church – shows her round. Studio – he goes to it to see picture – Anne and Lawrence. Anne comes to him in Study – taps on window
Chapter IV
Dinner that night – Lawrence there – Dennis – afterwards Lawrence with vicar. Dennis comes in after Lawrence has gone – wants to tell things. Says ‘What a rotten thing gossip is.’ Where does Mrs Lestrange go to at night.
Chapter V
Vicar called away – returns and discovers body.
Although the next extract is labelled ‘Chapter VII’ in the Notebook, it appears in the published novel as Chapter 6. From here on the Notebook does not specify chapter headings; I have added the actual chapter numbers to preserve the chronology:
Chapter VII [actually Chapter 6]
Inspector shuts up room and window and leaves word no-one is to go in. Learns from Mary next morning Mr Redding has been arrested – Griselda says ‘What’ – incredulous – couldn’t be Lawrence. What earthly motive. Vicar does not want to say about Anne. Entrance of Miss Marple – very terrible business – discusses it with them. Of course one knows who one thinks – one might be wrong. They tell her L arrested. She is suspicious – he has confessed. Oh! Then – I see I was wrong – I must have been wrong. Explain about clock – Griselda says again he knew. Miss M pounces on note – ‘Yes that is curious.’ Mary says Col. Melchett.
[Chapter 7]
A sad business – young Redding came in to the police station, threw down the pistol, a Mauser 25, and gave himself up. Declined to give motive. One thing I am amazed – the shot not heard. Vicar explains where kitchen is – still, I feel it would have been heard – silencer. They go to Haydock. They tell him Redding has confessed – Haydock looks relieved – that saves us all a lot of anxiety. Say 6.30 not later than that – the body was cold, man. Redding couldn’t have shot him then. He looked worried – but if the man says so he’s lying. But why on earth should he lie?
[Chapter 8]
The clock – what about the clock – it stopped at 6.22. Oh! I put it back. Note [from Anne] to Vicar. ‘Please – please – come up to see me. I have got to tell someone.’ Hands it to Col Melchett – they go up – Slack, Col and vicar. They go up. Anne – Want to ask you a few questions – she looks at him. Have you told them? I shook my head. I’ve been such a coward – such a coward – I shot my husband – I was desperate. Something came over me – I went up behind him and fired. The pistol? It – it was my husband’s – I took it out of a drawer. Did you see anyone? No – Oh! yes – Miss Marple.
[Chapter 9]
They go to see Miss Marple. They ask her. Yes – I saw Mrs Protheroe at about a quarter past six. No – not flustered at all. She said she had come to walk home with her husband. Lawrence came from wood path and joined her. They went into the studio – then left and walked off that way. She must have taken the pistol with her. Miss M says no pistol with her. Slack says concealed on her person – Miss M says ‘quite impossible.’
[Chapter 10]
Vicar goes home – Miss Cram with Griselda – about Guides – really curious – she goes. Vicar and Mary – about shot. What time – she is amazed. Griselda says about Archer the poacher. Colonel and Slack arrive. They go into study.
[Chapter 11]
Miss Marple with Griselda – Miss M says it reminds her of things etc. etc. – the washerwoman and the other woman – hate. I wish you would tell me the 7 [suspects]. She shook her head. The note – the curious point about it.
[Chapter 12]
They go to interview Lawrence. He tells – arrived there to say I couldn’t leave after all – found him d
ead. Pistol – it was mine – I picked it up and rushed. I felt demented. You were sure it was Anne? He bowed his head. I thought that after we had parted that afternoon she had gone back and shot him. No, he had never touched the clock. Mrs P, we know you didn’t do it. Now – will you tell me what you did? She does. If anyone else confesses to the murder, I will go mad.
[Chapter 13]
Miss Hartnell [actually changed to Mrs Price-Ridley] indignant complaint about being rung up – a degenerate voice. It threatened me – asked about shot. Yes, I did hear something down in the wood – just one odd shot – but I didn’t notice it particularly
[Chapter 14]
Haydock says about Hawes – Encephalitis lethargica. Mention of Dennis age by Haydock.
Although the novel is narrated by the vicar, it is not until Chapter 15 that ‘I’, the narrator, appears. Note the fluctuation thereafter between first and third person narrative:
Note from Mrs. Lestrange – I go there. Has hardly greeted her before the Inspector arrives – she asks vicar to stay – questions. She refuses information.
[Chapter 16]
It was after tea time that I put into execution a plan of my own – whoever committed the murder etc. Goes into wood – meets Lawrence with large stone in his hands. He explains – for Miss Marple’s rock garden
[Chapter 18]
Inquest that morning [afternoon] – Vicar and doctor and Lawrence give evidence. Anne Protheroe – her husband in usual spirits – Mrs Lestrange – Dr Haydock gave medical certificate. Murder by person or persons unknown.
[Chapter 19]
Then drops into Lawrence’s cottage. He describes how he got on at Old Hall – a tweenie overheard something – wasn’t going to tell the police.
[Chapter 20]
Vicar goes home – finds Lettice has been there – Mary very angry – has come home and found her searching in study – yellow hat.
[Chapter 21]
After dinner – Raymond West – the crime – Mr Stone. Raymond says it wasn’t him. Great excitement – tell the police. Another peculiar thing – I told him about the suit case.
[Chapter 22]
Letter from Anne – Vicar goes up to see her – a very extraordinary occurrence. Takes me to attic – the picture with the slashed face. Who is it? The initials E.P. on trunk.
[Chapter 23]
Vicar on way back knows police are searching barrow – his sudden brain wave – finds suitcase – takes it to police station – old silver.
[Chapter 24]
Vicar goes home – Hawes there – says will vicar preach – reference to headache powder. Notes 3 by hand – one in box – anonymous one.
[Chapter 25]
Mrs Price Ridley – her maid, standing at gate, saw something or heard somebody sneeze. Or a tennis racquet in a hedge – on the way back along footpath.
Near the end of the notes is a draft of the schedule that appears in Chapter 26. This also tallies in general with the published version. Minor details – the date of the month and a difference of minutes in some of the timetable – are, however, changed, as can be seen from a comparison with the published version.
Occurrences in connection with the death of Colonel Protheroe
To be explained [and] arranged in chronological order
Wednesday Thursday – 20th
11.30 Col. Protheroe alters time of appointment to 6.15 – easily overheard
12.30 Mrs Archer says pistol was still at Lawrence Redding’s cottage – but has previously said she didn’t know
5.30 Fake call put through to me from East Lodge – by whom?
5.30 Col and Mrs P leave Old Hall in car and drive to village
6.14 Col. P arrives at my house Vicarage and is shown into study by maid Mary
6.20 Anne Protheroe comes to study window – Col P not visible (writing at desk)
6.23 L and A go into studio
6.30–6.35 The shot
6.30–6.35 Call put through from LR’s cottage to Mrs PR
6.45 L.R. visits vicarage finds body
6.50 I find body
The attempted murder of Hawes and the text of the ambiguously worded but apparently incriminating letter of Chapter 29 are sketched in the closing stages of the notes, which end abruptly with the revelation of the guilty names:
[Chapters 27/28]
The call – I – I want to confess. Can’t get number. Goes there – finds letter on table.
[Chapter 29]
Dear Clement
It is a peculiarly unpleasant thing I have to say – after all I think I prefer writing it. It concerns the recent peculations. I am sorry to say that I have satisfied myself beyond any possible doubt of the identity of the culprit. Painful as it is for me to have to accuse an ordained priest of the Church . . .
The Notebook has no mention of Miss Marple’s explanation, although her casual mention of the names of the guilty is reflected in the book:
Melchett arrives – Hawes ill – they send for Haydock – overdose of sulphanol.
Miss M says Yes – that’s what he wants you to think – the confession of the letter – the overdose – that he took himself. It all fits in – but it’s wrong. It’s what the murderer wants you to think.
The murderer?
Yes – or perhaps I’d better say Mr Lawrence Redding
[Chapter 30]
They stare at her.
Of course Mr R is quite a clever young man. He would, as I have said all along, shoot anyone and come away looking distraught.
But he couldn’t have shot Col Protheroe.
No – but she could.
Who?
Mrs Protheroe.
As the first Marple novel, the place of The Murder at the Vicarage in crime fiction history is an important one. Miss Marple is the most famous, and arguably the most able, of the elderly female detectives. She was not the first; that honour goes to Miss Amelia Butterworth, who solved her first case in The Affair Next Door in 1897. Created by Anna Katherine Green, sometimes called the Mother of the Detective Story, Amelia’s career was predicated on a combination of leisure and inquisitiveness, as distinct from the professional female whose motivation was mainly economic. Other well-known contemporary female sleuths included spinster schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers, the creation of Stuart Palmer; mystery writer Susan Dare, the creation of M.G. Eberhart; professional psychologist Mrs Bradley, the creation of Gladys Mitchell; and private enquiry agent Miss Maud Silver, the creation of Patricia Wentworth. All these were contemporaries of Miss Marple, although only the heroine of St Mary Mead can be classified as a complete amateur.
The Murder at the Vicarage is a typical village murder mystery of the sort forever linked with the name of Agatha Christie; although, with ten books already published, it was only the second such novel she had produced, the other being The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Its central ploy – the seemingly impregnable alibis of a pair of murderous adulterers – was one to which Christie would return throughout her career. It had already featured in The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Death on the Nile, Evil under the Sun and Endless Night are other prime examples.
The Sittaford Mystery
7 September 1931
* * *
During a séance at Sittaford House the death of Captain Trevelyan is predicted. The worst fears of his friend Major Burnaby are realised when he finds the Captain’s body, murdered in his own home, six miles away. Inspector Narracott investigates with the unsought help of Emily Trefusis, whose fiancé has been arrested.
* * *
Despite the full-length debut of Miss Marple in The Murder at the Vicarage the previous year and the absence of Hercule Poirot since The Mystery of the Blue Train in 1928, Christie submitted a non-series novel to The Crime Club in 1931. The Sittaford Mystery had a six-part serialisation in the USA, as Murder at Hazelmoor, six months prior to its UK release.
The small bungalows, each with a quarter-acre of ground, described in Chapter 1 of The Sittaford Mystery owe their
inspiration, according to an early draft of Christie’s Autobiography, to the granite bungalow in Throwleigh, Dartmoor purchased for £800 by Christie and her sister Madge for their brother Monty on his return from Africa in 1923. The background of Dartmoor, and the sub-plot of the escaped convict, inevitably recalls Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (1896), which uses the same evocative and atmospheric setting as well as a similar sub-plot. Conan Doyle himself is referenced in Chapter 11 when Charles Enderby plans to write to him for an opinion on séances; this is a reference to Conan Doyle’s enthusiasm for spiritualism, an interest that dominated the last years of his life. Despite the passing reference in Chapter 7 to Trevelyan’s will, dated 13 August 1926, having been written ‘five or six years ago’, the mention of Conan Doyle indicates that The Sittaford Mystery was written, at the latest, in early 1930, as Conan Doyle died in July of that year.
As a plot device, the supernatural appeared spasmodically throughout the works of Agatha Christie. Two years after The Sittaford Mystery Christie published The Hound of Death, a collection of short stories, most of them published years earlier in various magazines, whose overall theme is the supernatural. It includes stories about a psychic in ‘The Hound of Death’, second sight in ‘The Gipsy’, a ghost in ‘The Lamp’, possession in ‘The Strange Case of Sir Arthur [sometimes Andrew] Carmichael’; and in ‘The Last Séance’ and ‘The Red Signal’ a séance, also the main plot device of The Sittaford Mystery. In the later novels Dumb Witness and The Pale Horse, the supernatural plays a part; and in Taken at the Flood it is her psychic ‘gift’ that directs Katherine Cloade to approach Hercule Poirot. However, in the case of the novels, the paranormal is merely a smokescreen used by the author (and a character) to conceal a clever plot. And so it is with The Sittaford Mystery. The table-turning is not merely atmospheric but a vital part of the plot concocted by the murderer (i.e. the author) to camouflage his intentions and, essentially, provide him with an alibi.
