Nemesis - Agatha Christie [0]
To Dauphne Honeybone
Contents
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
E-Book Extras
1 Overture
2 Code Word Nemesis
3 Miss Marple Takes Action
4 Esther Walters
5 Instructions From Beyond
6 Love
7 An Invitation
8 The Three Sisters
9 Polygonum Baldschuanicum
10 ‘Oh! Fond, Oh! Fair. The Days That Were’
11 Accident
12 A Consultation
13 Black and Red Check
14 Mr Broadribb Wonders
15 Verity
16 The Inquest
17 Miss Marple Makes a Visit
18 Archdeacon Brabazon
19 Goodbyes Are Said
20 Miss Marple Has Ideas
21 The Clock Strikes Three
22 Miss Marple Tells Her Story
23 End Pieces
Copyright
www.agathachristie.com
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Overture
In the afternoons it was the custom of Miss Jane Marple to unfold her second newspaper. Two newspapers were delivered at her house every morning. The first one Miss Marple read while sipping her early morning tea, that is, if it was delivered in time. The boy who delivered the papers was notably erratic in his management of time. Frequently, too, there was either a new boy or a boy who was acting temporarily as a stand-in for the first one. And each one would have ideas of his own as to the geographical route that he should take in delivering. Perhaps it varied monotony for him. But those customers who were used to reading their paper early so that they could snap up the more saucy items in the day’s news before departing for their bus, train or other means of progress to the day’s work were annoyed if the papers were late, though the middle-aged and elderly ladies who resided peacefully in St Mary Mead often preferred to read a newspaper propped up on their breakfast table.
Today, Miss Marple had absorbed the front page and a few other items in the daily paper that she had nicknamed ‘the Daily All-Sorts’, this being a slightly satirical allusion to the fact that her paper, the Daily Newsgiver, owing to a change of proprietor, to her own and to other of her friends’ great annoyance, now provided articles on men’s tailoring, women’s dress, female heart-throbs, competitions for children, and complaining letters from women and had managed pretty well to shove any real news off any part of it but the front page, or to some obscure corner where it was impossible to find it. Miss Marple, being old-fashioned, preferred her newspapers to be newspapers and give you news.
In the afternoon, having finished her luncheon, treated herself to twenty minutes’ nap in a specially purchased, upright armchair which catered for the demands of her rheumatic back, she had opened The Times, which lent itself still to a more leisurely perusal. Not that The Times was what it used to be. The maddening thing about The Times was that you couldn’t find anything any more. Instead of going through from the front page and knowing where everything else was so that you passed easily to any special articles on subjects in which you were interested, there were now extraordinary interruptions to this time-honoured programme. Two pages were suddenly devoted to travel in Capri with illustrations. Sport appeared with far more prominence than it had ever had in the old days. Court news and obituaries were a little more faithful to routine. The births, marriages and deaths which had at one time occupied Miss Marple’s attention first of all owing to their prominent position had migrated to a different part of The Times, though of late, Miss Marple noted, they had come almost permanently to rest on the back page.
Miss Marple gave her attention first to the main news on the front page. She did not linger long on that because it was equivalent to what she had already read this morning, though possibly couched in a slightly more dignified manner. She cast her eye down the table of contents. Articles, comments, science, sport; then she pursued her usual plan, turned the paper over and had a quick run down the births, marriages and deaths, after which