51. Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie (Mystery, Short Story Collection) 346 p.

It’s funny to remember it, but when I was younger, I didn’t really like Miss Marple. In fact, I found her quite dull. Right up until the point when she became my favourite of Agatha Christie’s characters. Old and gossipy, Miss Jane Marple has spent her life learning all about human nature, while hardly ever leaving her little village of St. Mary Mead.

This is amply demonstrated in The Tuesday Club Murders. At Miss Marple’s home are gathered her nephew Raymond, artist Joyce Lemprière, retired Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Henry Clithering, clergyman Dr. Pender, and a lawyer, Mr. Petherick. At Raymond’s suggestion, they decide to play a game: each will tell the true story of a baffling mystery only he or she knows the answer to, and the others will try to guess the solution. Although they invite Miss Marple to play only out of kindness, thinking an elderly spinster who has spent her whole life in a small village cannot possibly know anything of murder, Miss Marple gets the solution every time!

Some time later, when Sir Henry is again visiting the village, a dinner party which Miss Marple attends leads to the same game—with much the same result. In the thirteenth story, Sir Henry is once again in St. Mary Mead, when the apparent suicide of a young girl turns out to be murder. These thirteen stories form the largest part of the collection. The rest is made up of the seven Miss Marple stories that were published in the collections The Regatta Mystery, Three Blind Mice, and Double Sin.

The Miss Marple stories are uniformly excellent. I adore her rambling conversation, and her village parallels. This collection contains some of Christie’s funniest passages, like this one from The Thumbmark of St. Peter:

“Now, I dare say you modern young people will laugh, but when I am in really bad trouble I always say a little prayer to myself—anywhere, when I am walking along the street, or at a bazaar. And I always get an answer. It may be some trifling thing, apparently quite unconnected with the subject, but there it is. I had that text pinned over my bed when I was a little girl: Ask and you shall receive. On the morning that I am telling you about, I was walking along the High Street, and I was praying hard. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them, what do you think was the first thing that I saw?”

Five faces with varying degrees of interest were turned to Miss Marple. It may be safely assumed, however, that no one would have guessed the answer to the question right.

“I saw,” said Miss Marple impressively, “the window of the fishmonger’s shop. There was only one thing in it, a fresh haddock.”

She looked round triumphantly.

“Oh, my God!” said Raymond West. “An answer to a prayer—a fresh haddock!”

“Yes, Raymond,” said Miss Marple severely, “and there is no need to be profane about it. The hand of God is everywhere. The first thing I saw were the black spots—the mark of St. Peter’s thumb. That is the legend, you know. St. Peter’s thumb. And that brought things home to me. I needed faith, the ever-true faith of St. Peter. I connected the two things together, faith—and fish.”

Sir Henry blew his nose rather hurriedly. Joyce bit her lip.

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Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Agatha Christie, Anything Agatha Challenge, Miss Marple, short story collection