The stories appearing in this volume have all been previously published in
the following books by Agatha Christie: The Tuesday Club Murders, The Regatta
Mystery and Other Stories, Three Blind Mice and Other Stories and Double
Sin and Other Stories
Copyright © 1985 by Agatha Christie Limited
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
79 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016
Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Terry Antonicelli
First Edition
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976.
Miss Marple, the complete short stories.
1. Detective and mystery stories, English. I. Title.
PR6005.H66A6 1985c 823'.912 85-10220
ISBN 0-396-08747-7
CONTENTS
FROM THE TUESDAY CLUB
MURDERS
The Tuesday Night Club 3
The Idol House of Astarte
17
Ingots of Gold 33
The Bloodstained Pavement
47
Motive v. Opportunity
58
The Thumbmark of St. Peter
72
The Blue Geranium
87
The Companion 105
The Four Suspects
125
A Christmas Tragedy
142
The Herb of Death
162
The Affair at the Bungalow 179
Death by Drowning
197
FROM THE REGATTA MYSTERY Miss Marple Tells a Story 221
vi CONTENTS
FROM THREE BLIND MICE
Strange Jest 235 The Case of the Perfect Maid
The Case of the Caretaker
Tape-Measure Murder 279
FROM DOUBLE SIN
Greenshaw's Folly 297
Sanctuary 324
249 264
THE
TUESDAY
CLUB
The Tuesday Night Club
U
nsolved Mysteries."
Raymond West blew out a cloud of smoke and repeated the words with a kind of deliberate self-conscious
pleasure.
"Unsolved mysteries."
He looked round him with satisfaction. The room was an old one with broad black beams across the ceiling and it was
furnished with good old furniture that belonged to it.
Hence Raymond West's approving glance. By profession he
was a writer and he liked the atmosphere to be flawless. His
Aunt Jane's house always pleased him as the right setting for
her personality. He looked across the hearth to where she sat
erect in the big grandfather chair. Miss Marple wore a black brocade dress, very much pinched in round the waist. Mech-lin
lace was arranged in a cascade down the front of the bodice.
She had on black lace mittens, and a black lace cap
surmounted the piled-up masses of her snowy hair. She was
knitting--something white and soft and fleecy. Her faded
blue eyes, benignant and kindly, surveyed her nephew and
her nephew's guests with gentle pleasure. They rested first
on Raymond himself, self-consciously debonair, then on
Joyce Lemprire, the artist, with her close-cropped black
head and queer hazel-green eyes, then on that well-groomed
4 MISS MA RPLE
man of the world, Sir Henry Clithering. There were two other people in the room, Dr. Pen&r, the elderly clergyman
of the parish, and Mr. Petherick, the solicitor, a dried-up little
man with eyeglasses which he looked over and not
through. Miss Marple gave a brief moment of attention to
all these people and returned to her knitting with a gentle
smile upon her lips.
Mr. Petherick gave the dry little cough with which he usually prefaced his remarks.
"What is that you say, Raymond? Unsolved mysteries? Ha--and what about them?"
"Nothing about them," said Joyce Lemprire. "Raymond just likes the sound of the words and of himself saying
them."
Raymond West threw her a glance of reproach at which she threw back her head and laughed.
"He is a humbug, isn't he, Miss Marple?" she demanded. "You know that, I am sure."
Miss Marple smiled gently at her but made no reply.
"Life itself is an unsolved mystery," said the clergyman gravely.
Raymond sat up in his chair and flung away his cigarette with an impulsive gesture.
"That's not what I mean. I was not talking philosophy," he said. "I was thinking of actual bare prosaic facts, things
that have happened and that no one has ever explained."
"I know just the sort of thing you mean, dear," said Miss Marple. "For instance Mrs. Carruthers had a very strange experience
yesterday morning. She bought two gills of pickled
shrimps at Elliot's. She called at two other shops and when
she got home she found she had not got the shrimps with
her. She went back to the two shops she had visited but
these shrimps had completely disappeared. Now that seems
to me very remarkable."
THE TUESDAY NIGHT CLUB 5
"A very fishy story," said Sir Henry Clithering gravely. "There are, of course, all kinds of possible explanations,"
said Miss Marple, her cheeks growing slightly pinker with
excitement. "For instance, somebody else--"
"My dear Aunt," said Raymond West with some amusement, "I didn't mean that sort of village incident. I was
thinking of murders and disappearances--the kind of thing
that Sir Henry could tell us about by the hour if he liked."
"But I never talk shop," said Sir Henry modestly. "No, I never talk shop."
Sir Henry Clithering had been until lately Commissioner of Scotland Yard.
"I suppose there are a lot of murders and things that never are solved by the police," said Joyce Lemprire.
"That is an admitted fact, I believe," said Mr. Petherick.
"I wonder," said Raymond West, "what class of brain
really succeeds best in unravelling a mystery? One always
feels that the average police detective must be hampered by
lack of imagination."
"That is the layman's point of view," said Sir Henry drily. "You really want a committee," said Joyce, smiling. "For
psychology and imagination go to the writer--"
She made an ironical bow to Raymond but he remained serious.
"The art of writing gives one an insight into human nature,'' he said gravely. "One sees, perhaps, motives that the
ordinary person would pass by."
"I know, dear," said Miss Marple, "that your books are very clever. But do you think that people are really so unpleasant
as you make them out to be?"
"My dear Aunt," said Raymond gently, "keep your beliefs. Heaven forbid that I should in any way shatter them."
"I mean," said Miss Marple, puckering her brow a little as she counted the stitches in her knitting, "that so many peo-
6 MISS MARPLE
ple seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply you know, very silly."
Mr. Petherick gave his dry little cough again.
"Don't you think, Raymond," he said, "that you attach too much weight to imagination? Imagination is a very dangerous
thing, as we lawyers know only too well. To be able
to sift evidence impartially, to take the facts and look at
them as facts--that seems to me the only logical method of
arriving at the truth. I may add that in my experience it is
the only one that succeeds."
"Bah!" cried Joyce, flinging back her black head indignantly. "I bet I could beat you all at this game. I am not
only a woman--and say what you like, women have an intuition
that is denied to men--I am an artist as well. I see
things that you don't. And then, too, as an artist I have
knocked about among all sorts and conditions of people. I
know life as darling Miss Marple here cannot possibly know
it."
"I don't know about that, dear," said Miss Marple. "Very painful and distressing things happen in villages sometimes."
"May I speak?" said Dr. Pender smiling. "It is the fashion nowadays to decry the clergy, I know, but we hear things,
we know a side of human character which is a sealed book to
the outside world."
"Well," said Joyce, "it seems to me we are a pretty representative gathering. How would it be if we formed a Club?
What is today? Tuesday? We will call it The Tuesday Night
Club. It is to meet every week, and each member in turn has
to propound a problem. Some mystery of which they have
personal knowledge, and to which, of course, they know the
answer. Let me see, how many are we? One, two, three, four,
five. We ought really to be six."
"You have forgotten me, dear," said Miss Marple, smiling brightly.
· THE TUESDAY NIGHT CLUB
'7
Joyce was slightly taken aback, but she concealed the fact
quickly.
"That would be lovely, Miss Marple," she said. "I didn't think you would care to play."
"I think it would be very interesting," said Miss Marple, "especially with so many clever gentlemen present. I am
afraid I am not clever myself, but living all these years in St.
Mary Mead does give one an insight into human nature."
"I am sure your cooperation will be very valuable," said Sir Henry, courteously.
"Who is going to start?" said Joyce.
"I think there is no doubt as to that," said Dr. Pender, "when we have the great good fortune to have such a distinguished
man as Sir Henry staying with us"
He left his sentence unfinished, making a courtly bow in the direction of Sir Henry.
The latter was silent for a minute or two. At last he sighed and recrossed his legs and began:
"It is a little difficult for me to select just the kind of thing you want, but I think, as it happens, I know of an instance
which fits these conditions very aptly. You may have
seen some mention of the case in the papers of a year ago. It
was laid aside at the time as an unsolved mystery, but, as it
happens, the solution came into my hands not very many
days ago.
"The facts are very simple. Three people sat down to a supper consisting, amongst other things, of tinned lobster.
Later in the night, all three were taken ill, and a doctor was
hastily summoned. Two of the people recovered, the third
one died."
"Ah!" said Raymond approvingly.
"As I say, the facts as such were very simple. Death was considered to be due to ptomaine poisoning, a certificate was
given to that effect, and the victim was duly buried. But
things did not rest at that."
8 MISS MAR PLE
Miss Marple nodded her head.
"There was talk, I suppose," she said, "there csually is." "And now I must describe the actors in this littl151˘ drama. I
will call the husband and wife Mr. and Mrs. Jon es, and the
wife's companion Miss Clark. Mr. Jones was a trasveller for a
firm of manufacturing chemists. He was a good-looJ°king man
in a kind of coarse, florid way, aged about fifty. Hiis wife was
a rather commonplace woman, of about forty-five,"' The companion,
Miss Clark, was a woman of sixty, a sr5°ur cheery
woman with a beaming rubicund face. None of ' them, you
might say, very interesting.
"Now the beginning of the troubles arose in very curious way. Mr. Jones had been staying the previous6 night at a
small commercial hotel in Birmingham. It hap."Pened that the blotting paper in the blotting book had beenlno-r'ut intfr'esh
that day, and the chambermaid, having apparenty nlng
better to do, amused herself by studying the blc?tter in the
mirror just after Mr. Jones had been writing a letrer there. A
few days later there was a report in the papers of t/he death of
Mrs. Jones as the result of eating tinned lobster' and the
chambermaid then imparted to her fellow servant s the words
that she had deciphered on the blotting pad. TIey were as
follows: 'Entirely dependent on my wife ... v,/hen she is
dead I will ... hundreds and thousands ...'
You may remember that there had recently b n a ca.s.e of a wife being poisoned by her husband. It needed very little
to fire the imagination of these maids. Mr. Jones had
planned to do away with his wife and inherit undreds of
thousands of pounds! As it happened one of thdr maids had
relations living in the small market town where the Joneses
resided. She wrote to them, and they in return vd'rote to her.
Mr. Jones, it seemed, had been very attentive {o the local
d '
octor s daughter, a good-looking young woman of thirty-
three. Scandal began to hum. The Home Secret0'fy was peri-
THE TUESDAY NIGHT CLUB
9 tioned. Numerous anonymous letters poured into Scotland
Yard all accusing Mr. Jones of having murdered his wife. Now I may say that not for one moment did we think there
was anything in it except idle village talk and gossip. Nevertheless,
to quiet public opinion an exhumation order was
granted. It was one of these cases of popular superstition
based on nothing solid whatever, which proved to be so surprisingly
justified. As a result of the autopsy sufficient arsenic
was found to make it quite clear that the deceased lady had
died of arsenical poisoning. It was for Scotland Yard working
with the local authorities to prove how that arsenic had
been administered, and by whom."
"Ah!" said Joyce. "I like this. This is the real stuff."
uspcon naturally fell on the husband. He benefited by his wife's death. Not to the extent of the hundreds of thousands
romantically imagined by the hotel chambermaid, but
to the very solid amount of.Cs000. He had no money of his
own apart from what he earned, and he was a man of somewhat
extravagant habits with a partiality for the society of
women. We investigated as ddicately as possible the rumour
of his attachment to the doctor's daughter; but while it
seemed clear that there had been a strong friendship between
them at one time, there had been a most abrupt break two
months previously, and they did not appear to have seen
each other since. The doctor himself, an elderly man of a
straightforward and unsuspicious type, was dumbfounded at
the result of the autopsy. He had been called in about midnight
to find all three people suffering. He had realized immediately
the serious condition of Mrs. Jones, and had sent
back to his dispensary for some opium piJls, to allay the pain.
In spite of all his efforts, however, she succumbed, but not
for a moment did he suspect that anything was amiss. He
Was Convinced that her death was due to a form of botulism.
Supper that night had consisted of tinned lobster and salad,
Io MISS MARPLE
trifle and bread and cheese. Unfortunately none of the lobster remained--it had all been eaten and the tin thrown
away. He had interrogated the young maid, Gladys Linch.
She was terribly upset, very tearful and agitated, and he
found it hard to get her to keep to the point, but she declared
again and again that the tin had not been distended in
any way and that the lobster had appeared to her in a perfectly
good condition.
"Such were the facts we had to go upon. If Jones had feloniously administered arsenic to his wife, it seemed clear
that it could not have been done in any of the things eaten
at supper, as all three persons had partaken of the meal.
Also--another point--Jones himself had returned from Birmingham
just as supper was being brought in to table, so
that he would have had no opportunity of doctoring any of
the food beforehand."
"What about the companion," asked Joyce--"the stout
woman with the good-humoured face?"
Sir Henry nodded.
"We did not neglect Miss Clark, I can assure you. But it seemed doubtful what motive she could have had for the
crime. Mrs. Jones left her no legacy of any kind and the net
result of her employer's death was that she had to seek for
another situation."
"That seems to leave her out of it," said Joyce thoughtfully.
"Now one of my inspectors soon discovered a significant fact," went on Sir Henry. "After supper on that evening Mr.
Jones had gone down to the kitchen and had demanded
a bowl of corn-flour for his wife, who had complained of
not feeling well. He had waited in the kitchen until
Gladys Linch prepared it, an...
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