A Murder Is Announced

The fictional English village of Chipping Cleghorn is a backdrop typical of Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries, which are invariably set in picturesque, rural, relatively affluent communities. Chipping Cleghorn is “a beauty spot” and is largely inhabited by “elderly spinsters and retired couples” (42). Nevertheless, the cozy rural idyll is soon disrupted with a violent crime, an inciting incident that unsettles the reader by reminding them that death is ever-present, even in the most serene settings.

The opening two chapters set the scene for the crime, as the third-person narration gives insight into every relevant household and identifies the key characters. By the end of Chapter 3, the reader has met all the suspects in the forthcoming murders, and the characters’ choice of newspaper provides indirect characterization by introducing personality traits and relationship dynamics. For example, Edmund’s indolence is highlighted when his mother points out the futility of reading The Daily Worker when he does not have a “real” job. Similarly revealing are the individual responses to the murder announcement: Mrs. Easterbrook flatters her husband, manipulating him into visiting Little Paddocks, while the younger characters (Edmund, Patrick, and Julia) display a mixture of cynicism and disinterest, highlighting the theme of Youth and Age: The Generational Divide.

Miss Blacklock’s response to the murder announcement is unintuitively calm, contrasting with Dora’s distress. Her measured response seems to establish her as an unflappable character, but she is unperturbed only because she is the advert’s author—by the end of the novel, her character’s complicated past comes to light, and it is revealed that she hired Scherz to stage the holdup so she could shoot him while the lights were out (indeed, Miss Blacklock orchestrates the lights’ outage). Another indication that Miss Blacklock is not all she seems is her ostentatious choker of “large false pearls” (16). Throughout the novel, several characters comment on the “incongruous” effect of the pearls, which hide her true identity; her neck has a surgical scar, which will eventually expose her as Charlotte, not Letitia, Blacklock. Charlotte Blacklock has assumed her sister Letitia’s identity as part of a scheme to secure finances, yet the complexity of her ruse is revealed only in the last chapters. However, even while Christie provides such glaring clues—repeated references to the pearls and the central heating—she undermines them with evidence of Miss Blacklock’s good character. Miss Blacklock’s determination to help Dora and shield her from anxiety demonstrates a kindness and capacity for affection that seems inconsistent with a murderer. Thus, when Dora is later murdered, Miss Blacklock is the least likely suspect.

The Lasting Effects of World War II are introduced right from the start of the novel. Mrs. Swettenham’s comments on the personal ads highlight postwar austerity and the straitened circumstances of the middle and upper classes. As well as lamenting the difficulties of obtaining and keeping good servants, Mrs. Swettenham reflects on an advert for bullmastiff puppies: “I really don’t know how people manage to feed big dogs nowadays” (3). Accustomed to privileged lifestyles, Christie’s characters now endure continued food and fuel rationing, a governmental regulation that did not end until 1954. Acting as a social leveler, the rationing system disrupted the rigid boundaries of the English class system.

There is also the relative absence of conventional nuclear families in Chipping Cleghorn; with so many men killed in World War II, the author depicts a predominantly female society rearranging itself into alternative units. Both Mrs. Swettenham and Phillipa Haymes have lost their husbands, and both are left with sons to support. Although Phillipa is a “lady” by birth, she lodges at Little Paddocks and must take a gardening job to pay for her son’s schooling. “Spinsters” also abound, namely Miss Blacklock, Dora, and Misses Hinchliffe and Murgatroyd. Miss Blacklock and Dora’s relationship is based solely on companionship, but contemporary readings of A Murder Is Announced widely perceive Miss Hinchliffe and Miss Murgatroyd as a lesbian couple. Although the women are described as “friends,” Miss Hinchcliffe may be coded as a lesbian in that she wears “corduroy slacks and battledress tunic” and has “short man-like crop and weather-beaten countenance” (9). While, in reality, such traditionally masculine traits are not reliable indicators of sexual orientation, they could easily have been textual signifiers in this story’s contemporary cultural imagination.

The changing fabric of rural society is also hinted at, as very few characters have been established in Chipping Cleghorn for long. Their references to India show that the Swettenhams and Colonel Easterbrook have recently resettled in England, presumably having moved from India when it was partitioned in 1947 and ceased to exist as a British colony. Another recent arrival from abroad is Miss Blacklock’s refugee “help,” Mitzi. Inspector Craddock refers to Mitzi as “one of those Mittel Europas” (40), a generalized term describing peoples from Eastern European countries such as Poland and Ukraine. The other characters react to Mitzi with mistrust and xenophobia, reflecting their fear of the unknown. Ironically, in a novel featuring many imposters, Mitzi is one of the few characters who is truthful about her identity.

Chapter 3 sets up the scenario for a country house murder. While most of the characters anticipate a “game,” the novel’s crime-mystery genre inherently forewarns that an actual murder is imminent. The drawing-room is the classic setting for a closed-room mystery, and the detailed description of its layout will prove vital to solving the case.

There is an element of social comedy as each guest makes the same mundane small talk on arrival, admiring the chrysanthemums and commenting on the central heating. Christie’s use of humor distracts from the repetition of a significant clue: Miss Blacklock has arranged the room, like a stage set, to make her plan run smoothly, and she turns on the central heating, as an open fire would emit unwanted light during the planned blackout. A red herring is created when Miss Blacklock instructs Patrick to open a fresh bottle of sherry for the visitors, a gesture seemingly suggesting she fears someone has poisoned the sherry bottle in an attempt on her life. Christie utilizes a familiar Golden Age crime trope when the lights go out and shots are fired—yet she subverts that trope when the intruder, rather than one of the guests, is found dead.