A Pocket Full of Rye
First UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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9 November 1953 |
| Media type | Print (hard~ & paperback) |
| Pages | 192 (1st ed. hardback) |
| Preceded by | After the Funeral |
| Followed by | Destination Unknown |
A Pocket Full of Rye is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 9 November 1953, and in the US by Dodd, Mead & co. the following year. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6) and the US edition at $2.75. The book features her detective Miss Marple. Like several of Christie's novels (e.g., Hickory Dickory Dock and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe) the title and substantial parts of the plot reference a nursery rhyme, in this case "Sing a Song of Sixpence".
Miss Marple travels to the Fortescue home to offer information on the maid, Gladys Martin. She works with Inspector Neele until the mysteries are revealed.
When wealthy businessman Rex Fortescue dies after drinking his morning tea, the police are called in to investigate. The cause of death is poisoning by taxine, an alkaloid poison obtained from the leaves or berries of the yew tree, not in his tea but ingested earlier at breakfast. Searching his clothing, the police find one pocket full of rye, a fact not easily explained. Rex's wife Adele is the main suspect in the murder. Son Lancelot and his wife Pat are travelling from Kenya to London, at the invitation of his father, per Lance. At Paris, he wires that he will be home next day. Police meet him at the airport. The day Lance arrives at Yewtree Lodge, leaving his wife in London, his stepmother, Adele, dies of cyanide in her tea, and a few hours later, the maid Gladys Martin is found strangled in the yard, with a clothes pin put on her nose.
Inspector Neele is working full-time with the aid of Sergeant Hay on these murders, interviewing all at the office and in the home. The older son, Percival, tells the Inspector that his father was erratic and ruining the business. After the story of the three murders is in the newspapers, Miss Marple arrives at Yewtree Lodge, as she can shed light on Gladys Martin. Gladys learned serving and cleaning at Miss Marple's home. Miss Ramsbottom invites Miss Marple to stay at Yewtree Lodge. Inspector Neele agrees to work with Miss Marple, seeing that she can talk with people in a different way than he can. Neele learns that the taxine was ingested in marmalade, with a new jar put out at breakfast, used by Rex alone. That jar was tossed in the yard and found by police. When Miss Marple and Inspector Neele discuss the case, he shares that information, and she asks him if he has asked about blackbirds, having seen the pattern of an old children's rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence. When he does, he learns of dead blackbirds on Rex's desk at home, a pie whose contents were removed and replaced with dead blackbirds, and from Lance, of the Blackbird Mine in Africa.
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