A Murder Is Announced

Mitzi leaves the drawing-room while Inspector Craddock accuses Edmund of being the killer. Miss Blacklock enters the kitchen just as Mitzi is filling the sink. Mitzi offers to retract her story, but Miss Blacklock admits Mitzi was telling the truth. Plunging Mitzi’s head under the water, she holds her down. Dora’s voice urges Miss Blacklock to stop, causing her to scream and let go of Mitzi. Sergeant Fletcher apprehends Miss Blacklock while Miss Marple emerges from the broom cupboard; it was Miss Marple who mimicked Dora’s voice to startle Miss Blacklock.

Miss Marple says Miss Blacklock is Charlotte, not Letitia, and that Miss Blacklock’s choker conceals scarring from goiter surgery. Miss Hinchcliffe tries to attack Miss Blacklock, but Sergeant Fletcher holds her back. Charlotte Blacklock states she did not want to kill any of her victims, but Dora is the one she most regrets.

Miss Marple, Inspector Craddock, the Harmons, Emma, Patrick, Edmund, and Phillipa are assembled at the Vicarage. Miss Marple explains that only Miss Blacklock could engineer the perfect conditions for the holdup. She reveals that Scherz worked as an orderly at a Swiss clinic specializing in surgery for goiter (an enlargement of the thyroid gland). At the Royal Spa Hotel, he recognized Charlotte as a former patient. Charlotte developed goiter as a child and became reclusive as she felt it ruined her looks. Dr. Blacklock treated his daughter with iodine instead of sending her for surgery.

Miss Marple describes Charlotte as kind but weak, whereas her sister Letitia possessed inherent moral integrity. When their father died, Letitia took Charlotte to Switzerland, where the swelling was surgically removed. Charlotte covered the scar with a pearl choker. The sisters remained in Switzerland during the war, where they learned that Belle Goedler did not have long to live. Charlotte happily anticipated sharing Letitia’s inheritance as it would enable her to enjoy her new life. However, Letitia died of pneumonia before they could return to England. At that point, it occurred to Charlotte that she could take on Letitia’s identity.

As Letitia, Charlotte bought a house in an area of England where no one knew her. She happily took in Julia and Patrick when their mother wrote to her, as their presence gave credence to her identity. Charlotte’s mistake was her charitable response when Dora contacted her. Charlotte confided in her old friend Dora, who wholly supported the deception.

The biggest threat to Charlotte occurred when Scherz recognized her. Although he did not extort her, Charlotte may have believed this was Scherz’s intention. She gave him money to pay back the sum he had stolen from the hotel. She then paid him to play a fake intruder at a party, inviting him to Little Paddocks to show him the house’s layout. Charlotte stole Colonel Easterbrook’s revolver, oiled the second drawing-room door, and tampered with the lamp cord to expose its wires.

On the night of the first murder, Miss Blacklock let Scherz into the house when she went out to the ducks. At 6:30pm, she positioned herself by the lamp. Only Dora saw Miss Blacklock pick up the vase of violets (not the cigarette box). To short the lights, Miss Blacklock spilled the vase water onto the lamp’s bare wires and switched it on (Miss Marple explains she realized this when the Vicarage cat created a similar scenario). When Scherz flung open the drawing-room door, Miss Blacklock exited by the second door, crept up behind him, and fired two shots at the place where she should be standing. As Scherz spun round, she shot him, leaving the revolver by his body. Cutting her ear to fake a bullet injury, Miss Blacklock returned to her place in the drawing-room while it was still dark.

After the event, Miss Blacklock replaced the shepherdess lamp with the shepherd, thus concealing how she shorted the lights. The only remaining evidence was the “cigarette burn” on the table (caused by the lamp), and the dead violets in the dry vase.

Craddock says that Scherz’s death would have been ruled accidental death or suicide if it was not for Miss Marple. Miss Marple strenuously denies this, insisting Craddock refused to close the case. Miss Marple surmises that Miss Blacklock recognized Phillipa as Sonia Goedler’s daughter almost immediately due to the strong resemblance, and that she became attached to Phillipa and wanted to make up for disinheriting her. However, when Inspector Craddock learned about Pip and Emma, Miss Blacklock worried that Phillipa might become a suspect. To throw Craddock off the scent, she told Craddock that Sonia was “small and dark” and removed her photographs from the albums (293), along with any pictures of Letitia.

Meanwhile, Dora became a liability, accidentally calling Miss Blacklock “Lotty” and observing to Miss Marple that the lamps had been swapped. As Miss Blacklock loved Dora, she tried to ensure her friend enjoyed her final day before killing her with poisoned aspirin. She strangled Miss Murgatroyd because she overheard Miss Murgatroyd declare “she wasn’t there” (237, emphasis added), meaning that Miss Blacklock was not standing where she was supposed to be.

Mrs. Harmon asks about the list Miss Marple made. She observes that some of the items on the list have been explained, but not “Making enquiries?,” “iodine?,” and “Old Age Pension?” (255). Miss Marple explains that the letter Craddock showed her from Letitia to Charlotte spelled “enquiries” with an e, while a recent note written by Miss Blacklock used the word “inquiries.” Meanwhile, iodine is used to treat goiter, and Miss Marple remembered that the best goiter surgeons operate from Switzerland. Thus, she concluded that Miss Blacklock’s pearls might hide a scar. “Old Age Pension?” refers to Miss Marple’s recollection of a woman named Mrs. Wotherspoon, who fraudulently claimed another woman’s pension after she died. Mrs. Wotherspoon took advantage of the fact that “one elderly woman [looks] very like another” (170).

Once Miss Marple had solved the mystery, she enlisted Sergeant Fletcher and several others to help her. Mitzi was asked to claim that she had seen Miss Blacklock holding a gun through the keyhole of the dining room. Inspector Craddock pretended not to believe this story and accused Edmund, who had also been prebriefed. As none of them expected Phillipa to confess her real identity, Edmund was going to claim he was Pip. The aim was to make Miss Blacklock believe that only Mitzi was a threat, driving her to extreme actions. Miss Marple expected Miss Blacklock to either extort Mitzi or attempt to murder her. In anticipation of the latter, she hid in the broom cupboard, waiting to impersonate Dora.

Emma comments that Mitzi’s role in trapping Miss Blacklock has transformed her. Casting herself as a “heroine,” Mitzi has secured a new position and no longer fears the police. Pip and Emma have claimed their rightful inheritance, and Phillipa is now engaged to Edmund. Realizing he is a terrible novelist, Edmund has written a play called Elephants do Forget. Patrick asks Emma if they will have a similarly happy future together, but Emma clarifies that she will not marry him. She announces that she wants to become an actor and intends to apply for the place the real Julia quit with the Scottish theater company.

Mrs. Swettenham has moved to Bournemouth. Meanwhile, Edmund and Pip return from their honeymoon. They visit the newsagents in Chipping Cleghorn to order newspapers. When they place their order with Mr. Totman, he assumes the couple also want the Gazette, but Phillipa and Edmund firmly decline. When they have gone, Mr. Totman repeats the order to his mother. Mrs. Totman ignores the instruction to omit the Gazette, certain that every household requires a copy to keep up with local events.