The Murder at the Vicarage
Dust-jacket illustration of the 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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October 1930 |
| Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| Preceded by | Giant's Bread |
| Followed by | The Sittaford Mystery |
The Murder at the Vicarage is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1930 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
It is the first novel to feature the character of Miss Marple, although the character had previously appeared in short stories published in The Royal Magazine and The Story-Teller Magazine, starting in December 1927. These earlier stories would later appear in book form in The Thirteen Problems in 1932.
In St. Mary Mead, no one is more despised than Colonel Lucius Protheroe. Even the local vicar has said that killing him would be doing a service to the townsfolk. So when Protheroe is found murdered in the same vicar's study, and two different people confess to the crime, it is time for the elderly spinster Jane Marple to exercise her detecting abilities. According to Miss Marple, there are seven suspects, including the Vicar himself. After some juggling of clues and events, Miss Marple, using her excellent deductive skills, determines the facts of the crime.
At the end, she finds that the two people who confessed were, indeed, the real murderers and simply wanted to evade suspicion. Mrs Anne Protheroe, wife of the deceased, and Lawrence Redding, her lover, committed the crime. The vicar and his wife, Leonard and Griselda Clement, who made their first appearance in this novel, continue to show up in Miss Marple stories: notably, in The Body in the Library (1942) and 4.50 from Paddington (1957).
The Times Literary Supplement of 6 November 1930 posed the various questions as to who could have killed Protheroe and why, and concluded, "As a detective story, the only fault of this one is that it is hard to believe the culprit could kill Prothero [sic] so quickly and quietly. The three plans of the room, garden, and village show that almost within sight and hearing was Miss Marple, who 'always knew every single thing that happened and drew the worst inferences.' And three other 'Parish cats' (admirably portrayed) were in the next three houses. It is Miss Marple who does detect the murderer in the end, but one suspects she would have done it sooner in reality".
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Wikipedia