This story marks the first appearance of Miss (Jane) Marple. It came out in something called The Royal Magazine in 1927 and was followed up by a number of others that fell into two sequences, and which were later collected in the volume The Thirteen Problems. I think all of the stories were written before the first Miss Marple novel, The Murder at the Vicarage, which itself was an outlier in terms of its publication date (the next Miss Marple novel wouldn’t come out for another dozen years).
Christie’s inspiration was to make older spinsters more visible and give them a voice. That invisibility is very much pointed at here, as Miss Marple (you feel you have to always type that out with the “Miss”; she’s not like Holmes or Poirot or Wolfe) is one of a circle of friends who have gathered to discuss unsolved mysteries, but she’s mostly ignored as she knits in the corner listening to the others. Indeed at a couple of points in the story she is completely forgotten. And the group have assembled in her house!
Anyway, everyone decides that it would be fun to have the members of the newly formed Tuesday Night Club take turns telling mystery stories that they know the answer to and that the others will try to solve. Why? Because they all think they’re so smart. There’s a writer (Miss Marple’s nephew, Raymond West), an artist (the only other woman), a retired police commissioner, a clergyman, and a solicitor. They are all professionals, with the host being the one true “amateur.” But this will turn out to be her strength. She is a student of human nature, with fewer presuppositions based on a particular life history. Her method is to draw from her knowledge of other incidents in village life and find correspondences between them and the case in hand. And so in this story she is the one who is able to “hit upon the truth,” even as her correct conclusions are dismissed (twice, using the same language) in the final pages.
It’s quick and goes down easy. The solution, however, is probably well out of the grasp of twenty-first century North American readers. Indeed, I don’t think there are very many British readers who will still know the meaning of “banting” (dieting) or that “hundreds and thousands” are what we call sprinkles. And yet these are the two big clues used to unlock the mystery. While she may be a classic, Christie really wasn’t timeless. Which I guess is also a big part of her charm.
Alex Good 
What kind of thug doesn’t know what hundreds and thousands are? Are there such Neanderthals out there? I bet fraggle knows, and I do too; it’s YOU that are shown up, I bet you don’t even have fresh doilies for your cake-stand, you filthy animal!
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That expression meant nothing to me. It doesn’t even make sense. You guys can have it!
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Seems pretty obvious to me, they’re called Hundreds and Thousands because when you buy a bag of the sprinkles there’s hundreds and thousands of them!
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What else do you buy where the name is the quantity? Do you refer to eggs as dozens? Packages of buns as sixes or eights? Is it a brand name or just a common reference over there?
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Huh. Apparently used in the UK and some other English-speaking countries, but not much over here.
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Your loss.
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Haha, Bunty! Your knowledge of confectionary lets you down again! The British are coming! You won’t be solving many mysteries with such a limited vocab, Bunty! Leave you grappling for the names of bin packages, you caveman!
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The British are coming with hundreds and thousands . . .
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Yeah, she’s not timeless at all. But since she’s lasted this long, generations to come will be forced to read Miss Marple and have zero idea of what is going on.
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Maybe for hundreds and thousands of years! By then she may be totally incomprehensible.
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You misunderstand one cake decoration reference and you want to burn down the whole of art and literature! It pays to expand your word power!
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Yep, you had way too much sugar this morning.
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What about “barficles”?
Does that expand YOUR word power?
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Wut?
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Trying to expand your vocab with words you might not have heard of or used before.
I’m doing my one good deed for the day.
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Eddie was high as a kite on thousands and hundreds this morning, sort of like Scottish pixie dust as I understand it. Don’t think much was getting through.
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Well, with barficles under my belt, I’m all set to conquer Hollywood and make them kiss my boots.
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