A note appears in the Chipping Cleghorn Gazette that a murder is scheduled to take place at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 PM on Friday, the 29th of October. This is a surprise to everyone, including Letitia Blacklock, the mistress of Little Paddocks, a manor house in the town of Chipping Cleghorn.
At 6:30 PM on the specified date, several notable friends, neighbours and acquaintances show up at Little Paddocks, to witness the event. At 6:30, the lights go out, some screaming is heard, and a masked stranger with a flashlight bursts in and yells “Stick ‘Em Up”. In the next few moments, shots and screams are heard; when the lights come on, the masked man is dead and Ms. Blacklock is bleeding.
The police are called in, and they tap Miss Marple to unravel the mystery, which involves multiple intertwining plots including Ms. Blacklock’s former employer’s will, his wife, his estranged sister and her twin children, and lastly, Ms. Blacklock’s sister. Miss Marple, as usual, draws upon similarities to several past cases and identifies the perpetrators by repeating the steps used to solve those.
On the whole, I felt the plot was too convoluted and far-fetched. Unusual wills and testaments causing people to resort to murder to meet the criteria is a weak strategy. Perhaps it made sense in the context when it was written. Another weak point is Miss Marple’s detective skills. There is no actual deduction or reasoning, just a recollection of past cases and their solutions, and mapping those details to the current case in hand. This is hardly detective work; it is more like pattern matching.
I prefer Poirot.