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That is why everybody suspects Blake. The police arrest him but they still cannot find Blake's motives for that crime. Miss Marple is convinced of Blake's innocence and invents a smart plan. The next evening Conway Jefferson announces to his son- and daughter-in-law that he would bequeath all his money to finance a hostel for young girls working as professional dancers in London. When Mr. Gaskell hears the news he leaves in his car to London.

At night somebody attempts to kill Conway Jefferson, but Superintendent Harper can intervene, because Miss Marple gave him a hint that this could happen.

Josie (Josephine Turner) tried to murder Mr. Jefferson because she had a love affair with Mr. Gaskell. When she realized that Ruby would get all the money as the adoptive daughter of  the old man, she knew that Gaskell and she would not get a penny. Josie wanted to eliminate Ruby but didn't know how. She knew though that Ruby was in love with Basil Blake and this way she could direct all the accusations to Basil. For her plan she needed another blonde girl. The innocent Pamela Reeves was he choice. Josie told the poor girl that Basil Blake wanted to meet her. After that she strangled the girl and with Gaskell's help she moved the body to Blake's house. Basil Blake came back home late at night and discovered the body in his house. He didn't quite know what to do so he transported the girl's body to the Bantry's and placed it in their library. Ruby was also strangled and finally burned in the car. Before putting the car on fire she changed the clothes of both girls. When identifying the body at the police station she lied. It was Pamela Reeves and not Ruby Keene.

Josephine Turner did everything in the hope of sharing Gaskell's money as part of the heritage.

The moving finger

Main characters:   Jerry Burton

                                 Joanna Burton

                                 Emily Barton

                                 Megan Hunter

                                 Aimée Griffith

                                 Elsie Holland

                                 Richard Symmington

                                 The Calthrops

                                 Jane Marple

After a flying accident, the pilot Jerry Burton from London is rather badly injured. That's why his doctor Markus Kent advises him to spend some time in the country in order to promote the healing process. Jerry and his younger sister Joanna, who wants to accompany and look after him, choose the villa Little Furze in Lymstock, a quiet little town. The house belongs to Miss Emily Barton who will be staying at a friend's, meanwhile. She leaves her servant Patridge behind, to work for Jerry and Joanna. They soon get to know some inhabitants of the "village" as they call Lymstock. There are Mr. and Mrs. Symmington, for example. Richard Symmington is the solicitor of Lymstock. He and his wife have two sons, Brian and Colin, and Mrs. Symmington has another daughter from her first marriage, Megan Hunter. Even though Megan is already twenty years of age she is quite childish and immature and people even say she has got a low mind. Then there is Owen Griffith, the local doctor, and his sister Aimée. Further village inhabitants are Elsie Holland and Agnes Woddell, both maids at the Symmingtons', Mr. Caleb Calthrop the vicar, and his wife Dane as well as a rather odd man, Mr. Pye. One week after their arrival Jerry and Joanna get an anonymous letter saying nasty things about them. Having found out that this anonymous letter writing has been going on for some time, Jerry Burton gets more and more interested in trying to find out who is responsible for them. While discovering local scandals and so on, he gets to know Megan better. He realises that she is quite an intelligent and nice girl, though hardly anyone- except Joanna- thinks the same. And then, one day, Mrs. Symmington is found dead in her bedroom, cause of death cyanide as one  knows from the inquest, holding as scrap of paper in her hand, saying  "I can't go on". Everybody thinks she has committed suicide due to an anonymous letter which has been found right beside her body. So they are not searching for a lunatic who writes anonymous letters,  but for an- at least indirect- murderer. After this shock Jerry and Joanna invite Megan to stay at their place for some time in order to recover a bit. After Mrs. Symmington's death Jerry Burton gets even more interested in the whole affair and often interferes with Superintendent Nash's investigations with which one must say that he welcomes Jerry's help. Questioning a lot of Lymstock's inhabitants he discovers that most of them accuse Mrs. Cleat, the witch of the village as they call her. Admittedly she is odd, but Jerry and Superintendent Nash agree that she is very unlikely to be the one they are after. The letter writer, however, doesn't stop his nasty business. Superintendent Nash is quite sure it must be a woman because of certain clues. They still don't have any concrete suspicions, when a week after Mrs. Symmington's death Megan returns home from Little Furze and the next day she finds Agnes Woddell's body in a cupboard below the stairs. Symmington's maid has rung Patridge the day before and has told her she was worried about something and would be coming round, but she never came. Another inspector arrives to enlighten the crime. This inspector Graves and Superintendent Nash suppose that Agnes Woddell had to die because she had seen the letter writer and therefore the indirect murderer of Mrs Symmington. It was her day out and she went to see her boyfriend, but they had a row and so she returned early. Sitting by the window and waiting for her boyfriend to come and apologize she must have seen a person putting a letter into the letterbox. That's why, a week later, getting all this straight, she had to die before she could say anything. What follows is a number of suspicions. But all this seems to have a good side as well: Megan and Jerry get to know each other even better when he takes her for a trip to London one day (he has to see his doctor Marcus Kent). This trip changes Megan in a very positive way, and just as nobody expects it, Superintendent Nash proclaims that they have got her. Aimée Griffith is the one they have been after for so long. But is she really able to kill somebody? Miss Marple, who is visiting the Calthrops at the moment, doubts it and wants to know everything about the murder. The Calthrops invite Jerry and his sister to tea and he tells Miss Marple a dream he had some days ago. These words mix Miss Marple a little bit up, and she starts to think. After some more investigations, she knows who the murderer is and tries to explain it to the others. Jerry had indicated the whole thing to her. He saw perfectly the relationship of one thing to the other, but he just hadn't enough self-confidence to see what those feelings of his meant.

It is for her so absurdly simple, because you have to keep an absolutely open mind. It comes out that Mr. Symmington murdered his wife because he was in love with Elsie Holland, his maid. He wanted everything, his home, his children, his respectability and Elsie. Therefore he created a non-existent anonymous letter writer. That's why the police suspected a woman and not him. He just put the cyanide in the top cachet of the ones she took in the afternoon when her sciatica came on after lunch.

When he heard that Agnes Woddell wanted to tell something to Partridge, he thought she knew something. That's why he killed her!

So the mystery of the anonymous letter writer and the murder was solved and the daily humdrum returned to Lymstock.

Jane Marple

Miss Marple first appeared in a series of six short stories in Britain's The Sketch magazine. She was a member of the Tuesday Club, a discussion group that met in the quiet Kentish village of St. Mary Mead to discuss unsolved crimes. Other members included the vicar; Miss Marple's nephew, a successful novelist; his fiancée Joyce, an artist; and others. However, it was Miss Marple who always arrived at the solutions to the crimes.

These short stories were collected with seven others written especially for the volume as The Thirteen Problems, two years after Miss Marple's first novel appearance, in Murder at the Vicarage.

Miss Marple was not the first spinster detective - that honour belonged to Anna Katherine Green's Amelia Butterworth - but she is the one everyone thinks of when the concept arises. Miss Marple was based on Christie's own grandmother, a pleasant woman who nevertheless, according to Christie, "expected the worst of everyone and everything" and was usually right. A precursor of the character in Christie's own work is Caroline Shepherd in the Hercule Poirot novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. A spinster like Marple, Shepherd has the same interest in gossip and the same knack for knowing what's going on.

When we first meet Miss Jane Marple she is very much the stereotypical spinster of the last century - blue-eyed and frail, wearing a black lace cap and mittens, and constantly knitting. She is also a gleeful gossip and not especially nice. She modernizes and becomes nicer over the years - there are twelve years between the first Marple novel and the second, The Body in the Library, although some short appearances intervened.

Miss Marple is able to solve difficult crimes not only because of her shrewd intelligence, but because St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has put on a pageant of human depravity rivalled only by that of Sodom and Gomorrah. No crime can arise without reminding Miss Marple of some parallel incident in the history of her time.

The Seven dials mystery

Main characters:   Gerry Wade

                                 Loraine Wade

                                 Jimmy Thesiger

                                 Eileen Brent = Bundle

                                 Bill Eversleigh

                                 Ronald Devereux

                                 The Cootes

                                 Lord Caterham

                                 Superintendent Battle

                                 George Lomax

A group of young people are enjoying a short stay at Lord Caterham's house.

Oswald Coote is taking care of this house while, the Lord is away. Gerry Wade, a champion sleeper, is going on Oswald Coote's nerves. He sleeps much too long.

Jimmy Thesiger, Bill Eversleigh, Ronald Devereux and some others want to play a practical joke on Gerry. They set up eight loud alarm clocks to ring one after the other, starting from 6:30 a.m. The attempt to wake Gerry up doesn't work. In the morning they find out that Gerry is dead due to an overdose of chloral, which is a kind of soporific. Everyone is shocked to hear the news of Gerry's sudden death. The young people leave Lord Caterham's house as their stay comes to an end.

Lord Caterham returns with his daughter Eileen Brent, whom everybody calls just Bundle. She is a very lively and curious person. When she hears the news of Gerry Wade's death, she wants to see the room in which he was found dead.

What attracts her attention is the fact that seven alarm clocks are arranged in an even  row on the mantelshelf. She also finds Gerry's letter to his half-sister, Loraine Wade in which he mentions a "Seven Dials business".

Eileen decides to drive to town. She is driving rather fast, when suddenly a young man coming from the back of the hedge appears right in front of her car. With a risky manoeuvre Eileen manages not to hit the young man. When she looks back, the man is lying on the road without a motion. She runs to him immediately and finds him to be still alive. The young man whispers "Seven Dials.tell.tell.Jimmy Thesiger" and closes his eyes. Eileen puts the casualty into her car and rushes to the local doctor. After a short examination the doctor says that the patient was shot and is dead. The young man's name is Ronald Devereux. Bundle realizes that this person lived in her house when Gerry died. She intends to find out more about the "Seven Dials" and meets Superintendent Battle. Battle is surprised that Eileen is familiar with the "Seven Dials" but isn't much of a help. He suggests Eileen should contact Bill Eversleigh. Bill knew Gerry, Ronny and he also knows Jimmy Thesiger.

Bill tells Eileen where Jimmy lives. When meeting Jimmy, Bundle gets acquainted with Loraine Wade. Bundle tells the two what exactly happened and also about the "Seven Dials".                   

Jimmy explains that "Seven Dials" is an international criminal organisation. He is convinced that Gerry, who worked for the Foreign Office knew too much about this organisation, that is why he had to die. Also Bill works for the Foreign Office.

Jimmy knows, that Bill's boss, George Lomax is planning a party. It is a meeting of important businessmen, who intend to negotiate regarding a secret formula.               

George Lomax received a threat letter. Something is supposed to go wrong during the planned party.

Bundle, Jimmy and Loraine want to start their own investigations. Jimmy thinks it could be too dangerous for Bundle and Loraine. Bundle begins her independent investigations. Somehow she manages to find the Seven Dials Club and hide herself in the room where the meeting should take place. Altogether seven well dressed persons appear at the meeting. All of them wear masks.

The mask is a mere piece of material hanging in front of the features like a curtain in which two slits are pierced for the eyes. In shape it is round and on it is the representation of a clock face.

From the conversation Bundle finds out that there will something happen at Lomax's party. After this discovery Bundle meets Jimmy. They both tell Bill Eversleigh the latest news. They plan to go to the party. Loraine has to stay home as Jimmy doesn't want to put her in jeopardy. Trying to convince Bundle to stay away from the party would be useless.

Superintendent Battle is also at the party. George Lomax invited him for the peoples' security. A lot of dramatic things happen during the party. One tries to steal the secret formula, someone shoots at Jimmy, a Hungarian Countess faints and finally Loraine, who was supposed to stay at home, saves the package with the secret formula. Battle asks some of the people several questions but the facts don't make much sense.

Jimmy is sure that Sir Oswald Coote, who was also at the party is involved. After further research everything speaks against Oswald Coote.

Bill meets Jimmy and informs him that he knows who is responsible for everything.       

Soon after that Jimmy calls Bundle and asks her to come together with Loraine to the club where she saw the Seven Dials the other day. Bundle and Loraine drive to the club but it is not yet open, still they manage to enter the club. After a short while Jimmy shows up at the location. Bill is still in the car because Jimmy wanted to check first if everything was in order at the club. When Jimmy finds out that there is no danger he asks Loraine to go to the car to bring Bill along with her. Loraine can't believe her eyes when she sees Bill sitting motionlessly in the car. She alarms Jimmy immediately. Fortunately Bill is alive, so they carry him into the club. Jimmy wants to call for a doctor. In the meantime Bundle hears some noise upstairs, she climbs up the stairs and suddenly someone hits her from the back.