62 pages • 2 hours read
Agatha ChristieA Murder Is Announced
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1950A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Concerning a Door”
Returning to Little Paddocks, Craddock tells Miss Blacklock that Scherz was a petty thief who came to England with forged papers to evade the Swiss police. Miss Blacklock insists that she cannot think of anyone who wants to kill her.
Craddock questions Mitzi again. She remains adamant that she locked the front door on the day of the shooting and suggests that Phillipa is lying about locking the side door. Mitzi claims that on the day Scherz came to Little Paddocks asking Miss Blacklock for money, she heard Phillipa talking to Scherz in the summerhouse.
After interviewing Mitzi, Craddock tries to open the dummy door instead of the main drawing-room door. Dora points out his mistake and mentions that there was a table against the unused door until about a fortnight ago. She reveals that the door works but is locked and bolted and has not been used for years. When Craddock tries the bolt, it slides open easily. He finds the key to the lock in a drawer, and the door opens smoothly without making a sound. Craddock tells Dora the lock and hinges of the door have recently been oiled.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Pip and Emma”
Miss Blacklock expresses surprise upon hearing that the door has been tampered with. Craddock clarifies that anyone could have crept out of the drawing-room and fired the shots from behind Scherz. When he asks Miss Blacklock who would financially benefit from her death, she says Patrick and Julia will inherit most of her money, but she has bequeathed her furniture and a small annual sum to Dora. She adds that, although she is not currently wealthy, she will likely be so soon: Miss Blacklock was secretary to the millionaire financier Randall Goedler, who left his fortune to her in the event that his wife, Belle, died and could not inherit. Miss Blacklock explains that she enjoyed working for Randall but gave her job up to care for her sister, Charlotte, who had an illness. They went to a Swiss hospital where Charlotte died of consumption just over a year ago. When Miss Blacklock returned to England, she heard that Belle was unlikely to live much longer.
Craddock asks who would inherit the money if Miss Blacklock died before Belle. Miss Blacklock says it would be Pip and Emma, the children of Randall’s estranged sister, Sonia. Randall cut Sonia off as he disapproved of her disreputable husband, Dmitri Stamfordis. Miss Blacklock knows little about Sonia’s children except that they are twins and would now be in their mid-twenties. Craddock warns Miss Blacklock that he anticipates another attempt on her life.
Craddock reinterviews Phillipa, who denies speaking to Scherz in the summerhouse. Guessing it was Mitzi who made the allegation, Phillipa calls her a liar. Craddock does not trust Mitzi, but neither does he believe Phillipa, as she knew without being told that the alleged rendezvous occurred in the morning.
Craddock visits Miss Marple, and they discuss how rural communities have changed since the war. Villagers no longer know each other well, as new people are constantly moving in, making it easier to fake identity. Craddock tells Miss Marple about the terms of Randall Goedler’s will. Believing that Pip and Emma may be in Chipping Cleghorn, he wonders if they could be posing as Patrick and Julia living with Miss Blacklock. Miss Marple offers to find out what she can, reassuring him of her safety. Craddock reveals he is going to Scotland to see Belle Goedler and will leave a police officer posted in the village.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Miss Marple Comes to Tea”
Mrs. Harmon takes Miss Marple to tea at Little Paddocks. Dora tells Miss Marple about Craddock’s belief that the second drawing-room door had been oiled, but she apologizes when Miss Blacklock signals for her to stop talking. Dora appears increasingly flustered—she refers to Miss Blacklock as “Lotty” before correcting her name to “Letty”—and when Miss Blacklock suggests that Craddock does not want the information about the door to be public, Dora becomes upset, declaring she is a burden to her friend. Miss Blacklock reassures her she is a “great comfort.”
Faking harmless curiosity, Miss Marple asks about the night of the holdup. Miss Blacklock says she was just about to hand round the cigarette box when it happened, and Dora points out that one of the guests burned the table with a cigarette. Miss Marple admires the porcelain table lamp, and Dora tells her it is from Dresden and one of a pair. When Dora appears wistful about Little Paddocks’s furnishings and laments the burn on the table, Miss Blacklock teases her—“You care far more about my things than I do” (140)—but Miss Marple sympathizes, saying she herself gets as sentimental about some possessions as she does about photographs. While she is on the subject, Miss Marple says that Miss Blacklock must have many photographs of Patrick as a child. Miss Blacklock says she once had a picture of Patrick as a baby but had not met him or Julia until they arrived at Little Paddocks. Thirty years have passed since she last saw their mother, Sonia.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Morning Activities in Chipping Cleghorn”
Edmund Swettenham approaches Phillipa at Dyas Hall on the pretext of exchanging honey for vegetables. He tells her that he loves her, but she responds coldly. Edmund asks about Phillipa’s dead husband, but she tells him very little, simply saying that his name was Ronald and he was killed in Italy. The owner of Dyas Hall interrupts their conversation.
Sergeant Fletcher is alone at Little Paddocks with Miss Blacklock’s permission. While upstairs, he sees Mrs. Swettenham enter the hallway with a basket of fruit, which she leaves in the dining room. When Fletcher asks how she got in, Mrs. Swettenham explains that all the villagers are free to enter each other’s houses, and they only lock their doors at night. Fletcher realizes anyone could have entered Little Paddocks and oiled the door while no one was around.
At Boulders, Miss Hinchcliffe tells Miss Murgatroyd that something has been bothering her about the holdup, as the sequence of the night’s events seems illogical. To explain, she gets Miss Murgatroyd to re-enact the scene with a flashlight and a trowel as a stand-in for a revolver. Miss Murgatroyd finds it difficult to keep the swing door open while juggling the flashlight and the trowel—Miss Hinchcliffe points out that the door at Little Paddocks is identical and will not stay open on its own, yet no one could have held the door open for Scherz because Miss Murgatroyd was behind the door.
Meanwhile, Colonel Easterbrook’s German revolver has gone missing. He asks his wife if she can remember when he last showed her the gun because he’s worried that Scherz could have stolen it. Mrs. Easterbrook assures him that it was the day after the holdup, as the revolver made her think of the weapon the intruder used. Colonel Easterbrook is relieved.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
These chapters show Inspector Craddock and Miss Marple making separate inquiries about the crime. While Craddock conducts an official investigation, Miss Marple’s methods are more subtle. Feigning the curiosity of an “old lady,” she extracts information from her unwitting interviewees by putting them at ease. Although she ultimately has everyone’s best interests at heart, Miss Marple’s façade highlights the motif of the imposter. She adopts the anodyne guise of obliviousness, deliberately crafting the persona to her advantage. Later, she will even impersonate another character’s voice.
A host of suspects emerges in these chapters, although the clues are mostly red herrings. The revelation that Miss Blacklock will inherit Randall Goedler’s fortune deepens the mystery and raises the stakes, and Patrick and Julia come to the fore as they are revealed to be the primary beneficiaries of Miss Blacklock’s will. Questions about their identity are also raised when Miss Blacklock admits she had never met them before they turned up at Little Paddocks, and Christie strongly suggests that Patrick and Julia are the mysterious Pip and Emma (whom Miss Blacklock has likewise never met). Additionally, Mitzi’s claim that Phillipa secretly spoke to Scherz in the summerhouse casts doubt over Miss Blacklock’s lodger, and suspicions are also raised about Mrs. Easterbrook, who seems overly eager to insist that the Colonel’s revolver went missing after the holdup. Dora, too, becomes a suspect when readers learn that she will inherit an annuity and Miss Blacklock’s furniture. While Dora’s gains would be small, her preoccupation with the cigarette burn on the table suggests a possible motive: “Miss Bunner loved her friend’s possessions with as much fervour as though they had been her own” (140).
Within this sea of red herrings, Christie reveals two crucial clues: Dora inadvertently calls Miss Blacklock “Lotty,” and she tells Miss Marple that the drawing-room lamp is one of a pair. The name “Lotty” is a diminutive of “Charlotte,” which is Miss Blacklock’s actual identity—and though Dora quickly corrects the name to “Letty” (a diminutive of “Letitia”), the slip-up does not escape Miss Marple, who will eventually use the data to crack the case. Miss Marple also takes note of the drawing-room lamp. Dora says it is from Dresden, and the detail holds some historical significance: Dresden porcelain was the first successfully produced hard-paste porcelain in Europe, beginning in the early-18th century, and it was famous for its use in the manufacture of decorative luxury pieces. In the next chapter, Dora refers to these two lamps as “the shepherd” and “the shepherdess,” meaning that each lamp base is a fanciful porcelain figurine: One lamp is shaped as a shepherd, the other as a shepherdess, and the two were sold as a pair. Unfortunately for Miss Blacklock, the details of these expensive furnishings will play into her unraveling and eventual arrest.
With so many characters appearing increasingly dubious, a ubiquitous sense of uncertainty highlights the changing nature of life in a village community. Miss Marple points out that “[f]ifteen years ago one knew who everybody was” (132) as communities consisted of generations of the same families. Craddock echoes her concerns, uneasily observing that the war has made it easy for people to fake their identities. Craddock’s fears are well-founded as several characters are not who they claim to be, once more highlighting the motif of the imposter.
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