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~ Posted by
Samantha Weinberg, September 29th 2014 August 1978.
We were on a family holiday in Corfu and, seeking refuge from the sun,
I
wandered into the former olive press that served as the villa's sitting
room. I
took a book off the shelf and started reading: "Miss Jane Marple was
sitting by her window." That was the first sentence of my first Agatha
Christie, "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", and I don't think I
left the room until the sun had long set and I'd discovered the
identity of the
murderer—which came, as they should do, as a complete surprise. Christie
published 66 crime novels and more than 150 short stories (as well as
several
plays). I have no idea how many I’ve read, certainly dozens, though
only ever
once each. Until now. This summer, I was staying at my sister's house
in
London, battling with sleeplessness, when I opened a book that began:
"Miss Jane Marple..." Now, Miss M, a shrewd octogenarian amateur
detective and the much-loved heroine of 12 Christie novels, has become
a close
friend over the decades. I know the geography of her village, St Mary
Mead,
almost as well as I know my own, and I have more than a passing
acquaintance
with her nephew, Raymond (of Scotland Yard), and her former maid,
Gladys. So it
took a couple of pages to work out that I had read this novel before. Still, I
delighted in the familiar characters and setting (always provincial
England)
and tried not to think about the murder that would inevitably unfold.
This
happy state of ignorance lasted for 20 pages until Miss Marple's chance
meeting
with Heather Badcock, a kind-hearted busybody living in a new house in
“the
Development” (a new-style housing estate). Heather picks Miss Marple up
after a
fall and brings her into her house for a cup of tea. As she is
nattering on
about an exciting encounter years before, Miss Marple murmurs the name
Alison
Wilde, explaining that she was someone of whom Heather reminded her: "What
is your friend doing now?" asked Heather of Miss Marple with kindly
interest. Miss Marple
paused a moment before answering. "Alison
Wilde? Oh—she died." In that
instant, in that small, seemingly inconsequential scene, I remembered
the
entire plot of “The Mirror Crack'd”: who died (Heather, obviously), at
whose
hand (not telling), and why. I remembered the relevance of the title,
and,
reading on, I could identify the key clues in every unfolding scene.
And
therein lay the joy of rereading an Agatha Christie: once the whodunit
element
was removed, it became a question of howdunit—how Agatha Christie
constructed a
classic detective story. Every mark was hit: the instant the murderer
decided
to act described in exact detail, yet veiled in seeming inconsequence;
the
deaths that followed—for one murder, in Christie-world, inevitably
begets
another; and Miss Marple’s unflustered omniscience. On discussing the
first
murder with her friend, Dr Haydock, she suggests that someone might
have
witnessed it: Haydock
frowned. “For what reason?” he asked. “Are you suggesting blackmail? If
so—“ “If so,”
said Miss Marple, “it’s a very dangerous thing to do.” “Yes
indeed.” He looked sharply at the placid old lady with the white fleecy
garment
on her lap. “Is [that something] you consider…probable?” “No,” said
Miss Marple, “I wouldn’t go so far as that…Unless,” she added
carefully,
“someone else gets killed.” Despite
following a loose formula in all of her detective novels, Christie
avoids being
formulaic, through her imaginative crimes and through her characters.
It can be
no accident that both Miss Marple and Christie's other famous
detective, the
pint-sized Belgian Hercule Poirot, were given their own TV series. The
second
reading of "The Mirror Crack'd" may have lacked the thrill of the
first, but it was a wonderful exercise in reverse engineering. Samantha
Weinberg (pictured) is an associate editor of Intelligent Life This is the
first in a new series on the Editors' Blog in which our contributors
reread
their favourite writers
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