Murder, She Said Read online

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  ‘I am so old that death doesn’t shock me as much as it does you.’

  Sleeping Murder

  ‘One needs a great deal of courage to get through life.’

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  ‘Does a Woman’s Instinct Make Her a Good Detective?’ was first published on 14 May 1928 in The Star, a British newspaper, to coincide with the publication of the final story in the first set of six Miss Marple short stories in the Royal magazine.

  A ‘woman’s instinct’ is in any case a very debatable thing. We use the phrase glibly enough, but when we really come down to facts, what, after all, does it mean? Shorn of all glamour, I think it comes down to this – women prefer short cuts! They prefer the inspired guess to the more laborious process of solid reasoning. And, of course, the inspired guess is often right.

  What kudos then for Mrs Smith! ‘How could you tell, my dear?’ says Mr Smith admiringly. And Mrs Smith answers negligently: ‘I couldn’t say. I just knew.’

  But very intoxicating for Mrs Smith. To take no trouble at all, just make a leap in the dark and find it right! So, at Monte Carlo, we stake on a single number, and up it comes, and we say: ‘Funny! I just knew seven was coming up that time!’ But what about the other times when we staked on eight and nine and ten, and they didn’t turn up? Well, we don’t talk about them. Just as Mr Smith, returning from the City, talks a good deal about the coup he made in tin, how by far-seeing reasoning he deduced that tin was going to be a ‘good thing’. But he doesn’t mention the cropper he came over lead where his reasoning proved to be faulty.

  There is this to be said for Mr Smith’s method. It may be slow, but it usually gets there in the end, and if it does not get there, it still gets somewhere not very far away. Mrs Smith may be magnificently right – but if not she is wildly wrong. And when we come to the tracking down of the criminal that is an important point to take into consideration.

  Most criminals are caught in the end by patient methodical tracking down. Women are not methodical; they are tidy quite often, but methodical – no. Very few women are good housekeepers even while they have nothing else to do. On the other hand they are marvellously useful about the house. They can make something out of nothing, they can create an effect with the poorest material, they can hang pictures nearly as straight in half an hour as it would take Mr Smith a whole day with a foot rule and a spirit level! They have all sorts of odds and ends of information which would be invaluable to a tracker down of crime, but it is doubtful if they could use this knowledge to any effect themselves.

  Because, after all, women are not really interested in crime. The criminal, when all is said and done, is just this – an enemy of society, and women do not really care about anything so impersonal as that. If a man has acquired a plethora of wives, or murdered his spouse for the sake of another, they are interested. It is the personal side that attracts them.

  They lack, too, the spirit of the chase. Men love hunting things – whether foxes or other men. They do not mind if the chase is active or passive. They will stay on the banks of a stream in the rain for hours in the hopes of circumventing and capturing an elusive fish!

  Women lack this instinct of the chase. When a convict escapes, women say: ‘Poor fellow, I hope he won’t be caught.’ The fact that, for the sake of the community, the man would be better behind bolts and bars leaves them cold. If anyone attacks their own man or children, that is a different matter. Women are relentless when really aroused. But the embezzling of bank funds hardly stirs them to interest.

  Yet in a private and personal capacity women are wonderful detectives. They know all about Mr Jones and Miss Brown, and that the Robinsons aren’t getting on so well as they did, and that Mr White married Mrs White for her money. There is no deceiving them. They just know!

  Because, you see, they are interested. The Whites live next door, and the Robinsons just over the way. And that is what matters in this life.

  It was probably just the same in the Stone Age. Mr Ooly Boohgah went off over the heather with his club to do a little agreeable killing, and Mrs Ooly Boohgah looked into the next ‘hut’ circle and saw that Mrs Og Bog was wearing a new set of skins and wondered where she got them. And after thinking a minute or two, she knew! The pity of it was that Mr Ooly Boohgah wasn’t a bit interested. Men never are!

  ‘I so often seem to get mixed up in the things that are really no concern of mine. Crimes I mean, and peculiar happenings.’

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  MISS MARPLE: THE NOVELS

  The twelve Miss Marple novels were originally published in the UK by Collins Crime Club (London), and in the US by Dodd, Mead & Co. (New York).

  The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)

  The Body in the Library (1942)

  The Moving Finger (US 1942, UK 1943)

  A Murder is Announced (1950)

  They Do It with Mirrors (1952)

  A Pocket Full of Rye (UK 1953, US 1954)

  4.50 from Paddington (1957)

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (UK 1962, US 1963 as The Mirror Crack’d)

  A Caribbean Mystery (UK 1964, US 1965)

  At Bertram’s Hotel (UK 1965, US 1966)

  Nemesis (1971)

  Sleeping Murder (1976. This novel was written in the 1940s and saved for publication until after Agatha Christie died.)

  MISS MARPLE: THE SHORT STORIES

  This bibliography gives the first publication of each story anywhere in the world.

  ‘The Tuesday Night Club’ (The Royal Magazine, December 1927)

  ‘The Idol House of Astarte’ (The Royal Magazine, January 1928)

  ‘Ingots of Gold’ (The Royal Magazine, February 1928)

  ‘The Bloodstained Pavement’ (The Royal Magazine, March 1928)

  ‘Motive v Opportunity’ (The Royal Magazine, April 1928)

  ‘The Thumb Mark of St Peter’ (The Royal Magazine, May 1928)

  ‘The Blue Geranium’ (The Story-Teller Magazine, December 1929)

  ‘The Four Suspects’ (Pictorial Review, January 1930)

  ‘A Christmas Tragedy’ (The Story-Teller Magazine, January 1930, as ‘The Hat and the Alibi’)

  ‘The Companion’ (The Story-Teller Magazine, February 1930, as ‘The Resurrection of Amy Durrant’)

  ‘The Herb of Death’ (The Story-Teller Magazine, March 1930)

  ‘The Affair at the Bungalow’ (The Story-Teller Magazine, May 1930)

  ‘Death by Drowning (Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, November 1931)

  ‘Miss Marple Tells a Story’ (Home Journal, 25 May 1935, as ‘Behind Closed Doors’. First broadcast on radio, on the BBC National Programme, on 11 May 1934, when the story was read by Agatha Christie.)

  ‘Strange Jest’ (This Week Magazine, 2 November 1941)

  ‘Tape-Measure Murder’ (This Week Magazine, 16 November 1941)

  ‘The Case of the Caretaker’ (Strand Magazine, January 1942. An earlier draft, ‘The Case of the Caretaker’s Wife’, was published in Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making by John Curran, 1 September 2011.)

  ‘The Case of the Perfect Maid’ (Strand Magazine, April 1942, as ‘The Perfect Maid’)

  ‘Sanctuary’ (This Week Magazine, 12 and 19 September 1954, as ‘Murder at the Vicarage’)

  ‘Greenshaw’s Folly’ (Star Weekly, August 1956)

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  LITTLE GREY CELLS

  The Quotable Poirot

  ‘My name is Hercule Poirot and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.’

  Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective solved some of the world’s most puzzling crimes using only his ‘little grey cells’.

  ‘If the little grey cells are not exercised, they grow the rust.’

  Now, in his own words, discover the man behind the moustache, and the wit and wisdom of the Queen of Crime who created him.

  Includes an exclusive essay by Agatha Christie on her love/hate relationship with her most famous cr
eation.

  —— THE MISS MARPLE BOOKS ——

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Thirteen Problems

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4.50 from Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Nemesis

  Sleeping Murder

  —— MISS MARPLE STORIES ALSO APPEAR IN ——

  UK:

  The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

  Miss Marple’s Final Cases

  US:

  The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories

  Three Blind Mice and Other Stories

  Double Sin and Other Stories

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