Miss Marple – Miss Marple and Mystery: The Complete Short Stories

Agatha Christie

Miss

Marple

and Mystery

The Complete

Short Stories

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This collection first published 2008

Copyright © 2008 Agatha Christie Ltd

Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

The publishers would like to acknowledge the help of Karl Pike in the preparation of this volume.

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Source ISBN: 9780007284184

Ebook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007438976

Version: 2018-10-08

Contents

Stories featuring Miss Marple appear in bold

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Author’s Foreword to Miss Marple and the Thirteen Problems

1. The Actress

2. The Girl in the Train

3. While the Light Lasts

4. The Red Signal

5. The Mystery of the Blue Jar

6. Jane in Search of a Job

7. Mr Eastwood’s Adventure

8. Philomel Cottage

9. The Manhood of Edward Robinson

10. The Witness for the Prosecution

11. Wireless

12. Within a Wall

13. The Listerdale Mystery

14. The Fourth Man

15. The House of Dreams

16. S.O.S.

17. Magnolia Blossom

18. The Lonely God

19. The Rajah’s Emerald

20. Swan Song

21. The Last Séance

22. The Edge

23. The Tuesday Night Club

24. The Idol House of Astarte

25. Ingots of Gold

26. The Bloodstained Pavement

27. Motive v. Opportunity

28. The Thumb Mark of St Peter

29. A Fruitful Sunday

30. The Golden Ball

31. Accident

32. Next to a Dog

33. Sing a Song of Sixpence

34. The Blue Geranium

35. The Companion

36. The Four Suspects

37. A Christmas Tragedy

38. The Herb of Death

39. The Affair at the Bungalow

40. Manx Gold

41. Death by Drowning

42. The Hound of Death

43. The Gipsy

44. The Lamp

45. The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael

46. The Call of Wings

47. In a Glass Darkly

48. Miss Marple Tells a Story

49. Strange Jest

50. Tape-Measure Murder

51. The Case of the Caretaker

52. The Case of the Perfect Maid

53. Sanctuary

54. Greenshaw’s Folly

55. The Dressmaker’s Doll

Keep Reading

Appendix: Short Story Chronology

Also by the Author

Also in this Series

Agatha Christie: Miss Marple Omnibus

Agatha Christie: Miss Marple Omnibus

Agatha Christie: Miss Marple Omnibus

Agatha Christie: Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories

Also Available

Agatha Christie: The Mary Westmacott Collection

Agatha Christie: The Mary Westmacott Collection

About the Publisher

Author’s Foreword to Miss Marple and the Thirteen Problems

These problems were Miss Marple’s first introduction to the world of detective story readers. Miss Marple has some faint affinity with my own grandmother, also a pink and white pretty old lady who, although having led the most sheltered and Victorian of lives, nevertheless always appeared to be intimately acquainted with all the depths of human depravity. One could be made to feel incredibly naïve and credulous by her reproachful remark: ‘But did you believe what they said to you? You shouldn’t do that. I never do!’

I enjoyed writing the Miss Marple stories very much, conceived a great affection for my fluffy old lady, and hoped that she might be a success. She was. After the first six stories had appeared, six more were requested, Miss Marple had definitely come to stay.

She has appeared now in several books and also in a play – and actually rivals Hercule Poirot in popularity. I get about an equal number of letters, one lot saying: ‘I wish you would always have Miss Marple and not Poirot,’ and the other ‘I wish you would have Poirot and not Miss Marple.’ I myself incline to her side. I think, that she is at her best in the solving of short problems; they suit her more intimate style. Poirot, on the other hand, insists on a full length book to display his talents.

These Thirteen Problems contain, I consider, the real essence of Miss Marple for those who like her.

AGATHA CHRISTIE

Penguin edition, 1953

1 The Actress

‘The Actress’ was first published as ‘A Trap for the Unwary’ in The Novel Magazine, May 1923.

The shabby man in the fourth row of the pit leant forward and stared incredulously at the stage. His shifty eyes narrowed furtively.

‘Nancy Taylor!’ he muttered. ‘By the Lord, little Nancy Taylor!’

His glance dropped to the programme in his hand. One name was printed in slightly larger type than the rest.

‘Olga Stormer! So that’s what she calls herself. Fancy yourself a star, don’t you, my lady? And you must be making a pretty little pot of money, too. Quite forgotten your name was ever Nancy Taylor, I daresay. I wonder now – I wonder now what you’d say if Jake Levitt should remind you of the fact?’

The curtain fell on the close of the first act. Hearty applause filled the auditorium. Olga Stormer, the great emotional actress, whose name in a few short years had become a household word, was adding yet another triumph to her list of successes as ‘Cora’, in The Avenging Angel.

Jake Levitt did not join in the clapping, but a slow, appreciative grin gradually distended his mouth. God! What luck! Just when he was on his beam-ends, too. She’d try to bluff it out, he supposed, but she couldn’t put it over on him. Properly worked, the thing was a gold-mine!

On the following morning the first workings of Jake Levitt’s gold-mine became apparent. In her drawing-room, with its red lacquer and black hangings, Olga Stormer read and re-read a letter thoughtfully. Her pale face, with its exquisitely mobile features, was a little more set than usual, and every now and then the grey-green eyes under the level brows steadily envisaged the middle distance, as though she contemplated the threat behind rather than the actual words of the letter.

In that wonderful voice of hers which could throb with emotion or be as clear-cut as the click of a typewriter, Olga called: ‘Miss Jones!’

A neat young woman with spectacles, a shorthand pad and a pencil clasped in her hand, hastened from an adjoining room.

‘Ring up Mr Danahan, please, and ask him to come round, immediately.’

Syd Danahan, Olga Stormer’s manager, entered the room with the usual apprehension of the man whose life it is to deal with and overcome the vagaries of the artistic feminine. To coax, to soothe, to bully, one at a time or all together, such was his daily routine. To his relief, Olga appeared calm and composed, and merely flicked a note across the table to him.

‘Read that.’

The letter was scrawled in an illiterate hand, on cheap paper.

Dear Madam,

I much appreciated your performance in The Avenging Angel last night. I fancy we have a mutual friend in Miss Nancy Taylor, late of Chicago. An article regarding her is to be published shortly. If you would care to discuss same, I could call upon you at any time convenient to yourself.

Yours respectfully,

Jake Levitt

Danahan looked slightly bewildered.

‘I don’t quite get it. Who is this Nancy Taylor?’

‘A girl who would be better dead, Danny.’ There was bitterness in her voice and a weariness that revealed her 34 years. ‘A girl who was dead until this carrion crow brought her to life again.’

‘Oh! Then …’

‘Me, Danny. Just me.’

‘This means blackmail, of course?’

She nodded. ‘Of course, and by a man who knows the art thoroughly.’

Danahan frowned, considering the matter. Olga, her cheek pillowed on a long, slender hand, watched him with unfathomable eyes.

‘What about bluff? Deny everything. He can’t be sure that he hasn’t been misled by a chance resemblance.’

Olga shook her head.

‘Levitt makes his living by blackmailing women. He’s sure enough.’

‘The police?’ hinted Danahan doubtfully.

Her faint, derisive smile was answer enough. Beneath her self-control, though he did not guess it, was the impatience of the keen brain watching a slower brain laboriously cover the ground it had already traversed in a flash.

‘You don’t – er – think it might be wise for you to – er – say something yourself to Sir Richard? That would partly spike his guns.’

The actress’s engagement to Sir Richard Everard, MP, had been announced a few weeks previously.

‘I told Richard everything when he asked me to marry him.’

‘My word, that was clever of you!’ said Danahan admiringly.

Olga smiled a little.

‘It wasn’t cleverness, Danny dear. You wouldn’t understand. All the same, if this man Levitt does what he threatens, my number is up, and incidentally Richard’s Parliamentary career goes smash, too. No, as far as I can see, there are only two things to do.’

‘Well?’

‘To pay – and that of course is endless! Or to disappear, start again.’

The weariness was again very apparent in her voice.

‘It isn’t even as though I’d done anything I regretted. I was a half-starved little gutter waif, Danny, striving to keep straight. I shot a man, a beast of a man who deserved to be shot. The circumstances under which I killed him were such that no jury on earth would have convicted me. I know that now, but at the time I was only a frightened kid – and – I ran.’

Danahan nodded.

‘I suppose,’ he said doubtfully, ‘there’s nothing against this man Levitt we could get hold of?’

Olga shook her head.

‘Very unlikely. He’s too much of a coward to go in for evil-doing.’ The sound of her own words seemed to strike her. ‘A coward! I wonder if we couldn’t work on that in some way.’

‘If Sir Richard were to see him and frighten him,’ suggested Danahan.

‘Richard is too fine an instrument. You can’t handle that sort of man with gloves on.’

‘Well, let me see him.’

‘Forgive me, Danny, but I don’t think you’re subtle enough. Something between gloves and bare fists is needed. Let us say mittens! That means a woman! Yes, I rather fancy a woman might do the trick. A woman with a certain amount of finesse, but who knows the baser side of life from bitter experience. Olga Stormer, for instance! Don’t talk to me, I’ve got a plan coming.’

She leant forward, burying her face in her hands. She lifted it suddenly.

‘What’s the name of that girl who wants to understudy me? Margaret Ryan, isn’t it? The girl with the hair like mine?’

‘Her hair’s all right,’ admitted Danahan grudgingly, his eyes resting on the bronze-gold coil surrounding Olga’s head. ‘It’s just like yours, as you say. But she’s no good any other way. I was going to sack her next week.’

‘If all goes well, you’ll probably have to let her understudy “Cora”.’ She smothered his protests with a wave of her hand. ‘Danny, answer me one question honestly. Do you think I can act? Really act, I mean. Or am I just an attractive woman who trails round in pretty dresses?’

‘Act? My God! Olga, there’s been nobody like you since Duse!’

‘Then if Levitt is really a coward, as I suspect, the thing will come off. No, I’m not going to tell you about it. I want you to get hold of the Ryan girl. Tell her I’m interested in her and want her to dine here tomorrow night. She’ll come fast enough.’

‘I should say she would!’

‘The other thing I want is some good strong knockout drops, something that will put anyone out of action for an hour or two, but leave them none the worse the next day.’

Danahan grinned.

‘I can’t guarantee our friend won’t have a headache, but there will be no permanent damage done.’

‘Good! Run away now, Danny, and leave the rest to me.’ She raised her voice: ‘Miss Jones!’

The spectacled young woman appeared with her usual alacrity.

‘Take down this, please.’

Walking slowly up and down, Olga dictated the day’s correspondence. But one answer she wrote with her own hand.

Jake Levitt, in his dingy room, grinned as he tore open the expected envelope.

Dear Sir,

I cannot recall the lady of whom you speak, but I meet so many people that my memory is necessarily uncertain. I am always pleased to help any fellow actress, and shall be at home if you will call this evening at nine o’clock.

Yours faithfully,Olga Stormer

Levitt nodded appreciatively. Clever note! She admitted nothing. Nevertheless she was willing to treat. The gold-mine was developing.

At nine o’clock precisely Levitt stood outside the door of the actress’s flat and pressed the bell. No one answered the summons, and he was about to press it again when he realized that the door was not latched. He pushed the door open and entered the hall. To his right was an open door leading into a brilliantly lighted room, a room decorated in scarlet and black. Levitt walked in. On the table under the lamp lay a sheet of paper on which were written the words:

Please wait until I return. – O. Stormer.

Levitt sat down and waited. In spite of himself a feeling of uneasiness was stealing over him. The flat was so very quiet. There was something eerie about the silence.

Nothing wrong, of course, how could there be? But the room was so deadly quiet; and yet, quiet as it was, he had the preposterous, uncomfortable notion that he wasn’t alone in it. Absurd! He wiped the perspiration from his brow. And still the impression grew stronger. He wasn’t alone! With a muttered oath he sprang up and began to pace up and down. In a minute the woman would return and then –

He stopped dead with a muffled cry. From beneath the black velvet hangings that draped the window a hand protruded! He stooped and touched it. Cold – horribly cold – a dead hand.

With a cry he flung back the curtains. A woman was lying there, one arm flung wide, the other doubled under her as she lay face downwards, her golden-bronze hair lying in dishevelled masses on her neck.

Olga Stormer! Tremblingly his fingers sought the icy coldness of that wrist and felt for the pulse. As he thought, there was none. She was dead. She had escaped him, then, by taking the simplest way out.

Suddenly his eyes were arrested by two ends of red cord finishing in fantastic tassels, and half hidden by the masses of her hair. He touched them gingerly; the head sagged as he did so, and he caught a glimpse of a horrible purple face. He sprang back with a cry, his head whirling. There was something here he did not understand. His brief glimpse of the face, disfigured as it was, had shown him one thing. This was murder, not suicide. The woman had been strangled and – she was not Olga Stormer!

Ah! What was that? A sound behind him. He wheeled round and looked straight into the terrified eyes of a maid-servant crouching against the wall. Her face was as white as the cap and apron she wore, but he did not understand the fascinated horror in her eyes until her half-breathed words enlightened him to the peril in which he stood.

‘Oh, my Gord! You’ve killed ’er!’

Even then he did not quite realize. He replied:

‘No, no, she was dead when I found her.’

‘I saw yer do it! You pulled the cord and strangled her. I ’eard the gurgling cry she give.’

The sweat broke out upon his brow in earnest. His mind went rapidly over his actions of the previous few minutes. She must have come in just as he had the two ends of cord in his hands; she had seen the sagging head and had taken his own cry as coming from the victim. He stared at her helplessly. There was no doubting what he saw in her face – terror and stupidity. She would tell the police she had seen the crime committed, and no cross-examination would shake her, he was sure of that. She would swear away his life with the unshakable conviction that she was speaking the truth.

What a horrible, unforeseen chain of circumstances! Stop, was it unforeseen? Was there some devilry here? On an impulse he said, eyeing her narrowly:

‘That’s not your mistress, you know.’

Her answer, given mechanically, threw a light upon the situation.

‘No, it’s ’er actress friend – if you can call ’em friends, seeing that they fought like cat and dog. They were at it tonight, ’ammer and tongs.’

A trap! He saw it now.

‘Where’s your mistress?’

‘Went out ten minutes ago.’

A trap! And he had walked into it like a lamb. A clever devil, this Olga Stormer; she had rid herself of a rival, and he was to suffer for the deed. Murder! My God, they hanged a man for murder! And he was innocent – innocent!

A stealthy rustle recalled him. The little maid was sidling towards the door. Her wits were beginning to work again. Her eyes wavered to the telephone, then back to the door. At all costs he must silence her. It was the only way. As well hang for a real crime as a fictitious one. She had no weapon, neither had he. But he had his hands! Then his heart gave a leap. On the table beside her, almost under her hand, lay a small, jewelled revolver. If he could reach it first –

Instinct or his eyes warned her. She caught it up as he sprang and held it pointed at his breast. Awkwardly as she held it, her finger was on the trigger, and she could hardly miss him at that distance. He stopped dead. A revolver belonging to a woman like Olga Stormer would be pretty sure to be loaded.

But there was one thing, she was no longer directly between him and the door. So long as he did not attack her, she might not have the nerve to shoot. Anyway, he must risk it. Zig-zagging, he ran for the door, through the hall and out through the outer door, banging it behind him. He heard her voice, faint and shaky, calling, ‘Police, Murder!’ She’d have to call louder than that before anyone was likely to hear her. He’d got a start, anyway. Down the stairs he went, running down the open street, then slacking to a walk as a stray pedestrian turned the corner. He had his plan cut and dried. To Gravesend as quickly as possible. A boat was sailing from there that night for the remoter parts of the world. He knew the captain, a man who, for a consideration, would ask no questions. Once on board and out to sea he would be safe.

At eleven o’clock Danahan’s telephone rang. Olga’s voice spoke.

‘Prepare a contract for Miss Ryan, will you? She’s to understudy “Cora”. It’s absolutely no use arguing. I owe her something after all the things I did to her tonight! What? Yes, I think I’m out of my troubles. By the way, if she tells you tomorrow that I’m an ardent spiritualist and put her into a trance tonight, don’t show open incredulity. How? Knock-out drops in the coffee, followed by scientific passes! After that I painted her face with purple grease paint and put a tourniquet on her left arm! Mystified? Well, you must stay mystified until tomorrow. I haven’t time to explain now. I must get out of the cap and apron before my faithful Maud returns from the pictures. There was a “beautiful drama” on tonight, she told me. But she missed the best drama of all. I played my best part tonight, Danny. The mittens won! Jake Levitt is a coward all right, and oh, Danny, Danny – I’m an actress!’

2 The Girl in the Train

‘The Girl in the Train’ was first published in Grand Magazine, February 1924.

‘And that’s that!’ observed George Rowland ruefully, as he gazed up at the imposing smoke-grimed façade of the building he had just quitted.

It might be said to represent very aptly the power of Money – and Money, in the person of William Rowland, uncle to the aforementioned George, had just spoken its mind very freely. In the course of a brief ten minutes, from being the apple of his uncle’s eye, the heir to his wealth, and a young man with a promising business career in front of him, George had suddenly become one of the vast army of the unemployed.

‘And in these clothes they won’t even give me the dole,’ reflected Mr Rowland gloomily, ‘and as for writing poems and selling them at the door at twopence (or “what you care to give, lydy”) I simply haven’t got the brains.’

It was true that George embodied a veritable triumph of the tailor’s art. He was exquisitely and beautifully arrayed. Solomon and the lilies of the field were simply not in it with George. But man cannot live by clothes alone – unless he has had some considerable training in the art – and Mr Rowland was painfully aware of the fact.

‘And all because of that rotten show last night,’ he reflected sadly.

The rotten show last night had been a Covent Garden Ball. Mr Rowland had returned from it at a somewhat late – or rather early – hour – as a matter of fact, he could not strictly say that he remembered returning at all. Rogers, his uncle’s butler, was a helpful fellow, and could doubtless give more details on the matter. A splitting head, a cup of strong tea, and an arrival at the office at five minutes to twelve instead of half-past nine had precipitated the catastrophe. Mr Rowland, senior, who for twenty-four years had condoned and paid up as a tactful relative should, had suddenly abandoned these tactics and revealed himself in a totally new light. The inconsequence of George’s replies (the young man’s head was still opening and shutting like some mediaeval instrument of the Inquisition) had displeased him still further. William Rowland was nothing if not thorough. He cast his nephew adrift upon the world in a few short succinct words, and then settled down to his interrupted survey of some oilfields in Peru.

George Rowland shook the dust of his uncle’s office from off his feet, and stepped out into the City of London. George was a practical fellow. A good lunch, he considered, was essential to a review of the situation. He had it. Then he retraced his steps to the family mansion. Rogers opened the door. His well-trained face expressed no surprise at seeing George at this unusual hour.