ABOUT THE BOOK
Well this book “THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE” by Agatha Christie belongs to the Marple series where Miss Marple(“the white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner”) is an amateur detective solving a very complicated case… This book is a first person narrated book and Miss Marple’s deduction skills are potrayed very skillfully in this book…..
THE STORY
The narrator of the story is the vicar of the St. Mary Mead (the village where Miss Marple resides) and a murder takes place at his vicarage. The murdered man, Colonel Protheroe was very unpopular and almost everyone residing in the village wished him dead, even the day before his murder the vicar himself remarked that “anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world a great favour”…..but never did the poor parson realise that the murder would take place the very next day only and that also at his own house….
Now the night the murder was committed, a man named Lawrence Redding gave himself up to the police and admitted his crime but the twist comes when Protheroe’s wife admits that she committed the crime…but on Miss Marple’s advice the police cross questioned them and came to know that they loved each other and both of them thought that the other one had killed Protheroe…so they both tried to save each other…and the police let them go.But still the question remained who murdered Protheroe???
The vicar, Mr. Clement discussed the crime over and over with Miss Marple and Miss Marple told him that she had seven suspects who had very good reasons to wish Protheroe dead….these suspects were: Archer, a poacher(drunkard), whom Protheroe had given punishment for his illegal activities; Mary , the maid at the vicarage, she was Archer’s girlfriend and she was the only person present at the vicarage at the time of the murder(though she says she was in the other wing of the house);Old Mrs. Archer, Archer’s mother, maid of Mr. Lawrence and since the crime was committed with Mr. Lawrence’s pistol, she also was included in the suspects; Lettice, Protheroe’s daughter from his first wife, who always wanted freedom and wanted to get away from her father; Griselda, the “vicaress”, a childish woman who had been seen coming out of Lawrence’s cottage the day the murder was committed and though she said she went to London, it was known she was lying; then there was Hawes, a clergyman who stole a lot of the fund money raised by the church…Protheroe wanted to check the accounts of the church and so Hawes had a motive for killing him, moreover Hawes had some nervous disorder due to which he sometimes lost control over himself; the vicar himself was suspected because he also had some disagreement with Protheroe over the church accounts and many people heard him remarking that he wished Protheroe dead; and Lastly Mrs. Protheroe and Lawrence Redding who were desperately in love and could do anything for their own happiness…..and who do you think the murderer is out of these seven suspects???
Well check out the book for yourself to know who the real murderer is!!!
MY VIEWS
At first the book seemed a little boring but after the murder occurs, the book grips the reader’s attention…the suspense built from this point is fantastic to experience…..so according to me this book is a must-read for everybody!!!