Marple: Miss Marple Tells a Story

/ Alex Good

Short and sweet. The story is presented as a monologue, with Miss Marple addressing Raymond (her nephew) and Joan (Raymond’s wife). This is because it was originally commissioned for radio, where it was read by Christie herself. I thought this broadcast version was available online somewhere, but the last time I checked I couldn’t find it. I’m sure it’s out there though.

What we’re presented with is a “perfect murder” or locked-room mystery. A woman goes in to her bedroom and is then found stabbed to death on her bed a few hours later, even though the doors and windows to her bedroom are all locked from the inside.

When talking about magic tricks that seem impossible, the rule is that if there’s only one way it could be done then that’s the way it had to have been done (I’m getting this from a video I watched by Penn Jillette). In this case there is an out that’s presented and as soon as it is then you can probably figure out how things must have been arranged. But I did like the way the solution turned on how we can all look at things and not see them. It’s the cocktail-party effect, as we filter out everything that we may be aware of but that our brains tell us isn’t important. In this case it also comes with a class argument, which made me think of how Paul Fussell in his book Class describes homeless people as being invisible even as they’re living on the street in plain sight.

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