A characteristic of a lot of detective fiction is that it’s quickly consumed and just as quickly forgotten. We remember the classics – The Hound of the Baskervilles, Murder on the Orient Express – but the others disappear from our minds so quickly that we can read the same book just a year or even months later and be unable to remember the first thing about them. At least this is true for me, as it was for my mother, who always had a mystery novel (or several) by her bedside. When I commented on the fact that she’d read some of them before she’d reply that it didn’t matter because she could no longer remember whodunit.

One reason I think this happens is because a lot of what goes on in a mystery novel is supposed to be quickly forgotten. Important clues are skimmed over in such a way that you’re meant to miss them. Is it any wonder they vanish from our minds when the book is done?

That’s just a theory of mine. But it helps explain how, when I came to write up these notes on The Murder at the Vicarage only a couple of weeks after finishing reading it, I could no longer recall who it was that had been killed at the vicarage, who had done the killing, and why. And this wasn’t a momentary lapse of recall. I tried for hours to think of what had happened in the book and couldn’t come up with anything.

At any rate, the story has it that Colonel Protheroe is shot in the vicar’s study, and there are no end of suspicious characters floating around. The vicar himself is the narrator, and he finds the discovery of a body in his study quite upsetting not just for personal reasons but because “nothing exciting ever happens” in town. “There are had been no murder in St. Mary Mead for at least fifteen years,” and as a result they “are not used to mysteries.” Seeing as this was the first Miss Marple novel, these might be taken as famous last words. But once Jane is on the case he knows things are in good hands. “There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.” Especially when that spinster is “not the type of elderly lady who makes mistakes. She has got the uncanny knack of always being right.”

Miss Marple operates, as usual, in the background. I’ve mentioned how the vicar tells the story and the truth is we don’t get to see the detective spinster doing much. Which isn’t too much of a problem as it also seems natural for the police to invite any respectable citizens to join them in the investigation by sitting in on interviews of suspects and inspecting evidence and the like. Those were the days!

It’s also nice that Miss Marple isn’t as direct a presence because she is a pain in the ass. As Robert Barnard remarked of this novel, “the strong dose of vinegar in this first sketch of Miss Marple is more to modern taste than the touch of syrup in later presentations.” I don’t know. I don’t like the vinegar or the syrup, to be honest. She’s either bitchy or a quietly superior know-it-all with the uncanny knack of always being right? Those aren’t great options.

The plot is pure Christie, and features most of her staple elements. The theatricality of the crime, with its ridiculously complicated staging (the business of faking the gunshot had me rolling my eyes in a loop). The importance of a strict time scheme, which can also be cleverly manipulated. Two or more killers working together to give each other alibis. The simplicity of motive, which always comes down to lust or greed. A third category, of mental disturbance or “queerness,” is never in play. The doctor may have his medical theories to explain crime, but Miss Marple knows better, being a student of that great generality “Human Nature.”

There are also those dated references that a twenty-first century reader may take some time figuring out. One of the girls here is described as having “Lots of S.A.” It took me a while to decide that this must mean sex appeal. (In the story “The Herb of Death” Miss Marple herself had to have it explained.) And here’s another siren who the vicar observes with disapproval: “Her legs, which were encased in particularly shiny pink stockings, were crossed, and I had every opportunity of observing that she wore pink striped silk knickers.” This struck me as shocking until I realized that “knickers” in this context must have been referring to something like a slip.

But in the end I didn’t care for this one very much. It’s a weak mystery, and the explanation confusing, far-fetched, and uninteresting. For a book only too aware of its status as a mystery (there are repeated references to the events being just like a mystery novel), it doesn’t play as very clever or arch. And as I say, as soon as it’s finished it’s forgotten.

Marple index