The Thirteen Problems

Bah! cried Joyce, flinging back her black head indignantly. I bet I could beat you all at this game. I am not only a woman — and say what you like, women have an intuition that is denied to men — I am an artist as well. I see things that you don't. And then, too, as an artist I have knocked about among all sorts and conditions of people. I know life as darling Miss Marple here cannot possibly know it.

I don't know about that, dear, said Miss Marple. Very painful and distressing things happen in villages sometimes.

May I speak? said Dr Pender smiling. It is the fashion nowadays to decry the clergy, I know, but we hear things, we know a side of human character which is a closed book to the outside world.

Well, said Joyce, it seems to me we are a pretty representative gathering. How would it be if we formed a Club? What is today? Tuesday? We will call it The Tuesday Night Club. It is to meet every week, and each member in turn has to propound a problem. Some mystery of which they have personal knowledge, and to which, of course, they know the answer. Let me see, how many are we? One, two, three, four, five. We ought really to be six.

You have forgotten me, dear, said Miss Marple, smiling brightly.

Joyce was slightly taken aback, but she concealed the fact quickly. That would be lovely, Miss Marple, she said. I didn't think you would care to play.

I think it would be very interesting, said Miss Marple, especially with so many clever gentlemen present. I am afraid I am not clever myself, but living all these years in St Mary Mead does give one an insight into human nature.

I am sure your co-operation will be very valuable, laid Sir Henry, courteously.

Who is going to start? said Joyce.

I think there is no doubt as to that, said Dr Pender, when we have the great good fortune to have such a distinguished man as Sir Henry staying with us.

He left his sentence unfinished, making a courtly bow in the direction of Sir Henry.

The latter was silent for a minute or two. At last he sighed and recrossed his legs and began: It is a little difficult for me to select just the kind of thing you want, but I think, as it happens, I know of an instance which fits these conditions very aptly. You may have seen some mention of the case in the papers of a year ago. It was laid aside at the time as an unsolved mystery, but, as it happens, the solution came into my hands not very many days ago.

The facts are very simple. Three people sat down to a supper consisting, amongst other things, of tinned lobster. Later in the night, all three were taken ill, and a doctor was hastily summoned. Two of the people recovered, the third one died.

Ah! said Raymond approvingly. As I say, the facts as such were very simple. Death was considered to be due to ptomaine poisoning, a certificate was given to that effect, and the victim was duly buried. But things did not rest at that.

Miss Marple nodded her head. There was talk, I suppose, she said, there usually is.

And now I must describe the actors in this little drama. I will call the husband and wife Mr and Mrs Jones, and the wife's companion Miss Clark. Mr Jones was a traveller for a firm of manufacturing chemists. He was a good-looking man in a kind of coarse, florid way, aged about fifty. His wife was a rather common-place woman, of about forty-five. The companion, Miss Clark, was a woman of sixty, a stout cheery woman with a beaming rubicund face. None of them, you might say, very interesting.

Now the beginning of the troubles arose in a very curious way. Mr Jones had been staying the previous night at a small commercial hotel in Birmingham. It happened that the blotting paper in the blotting book had been put in fresh that day, and the chambermaid, having apparently nothing better to do, amused herself by studying the blotter in the mirror just after Mr Jones had been writing a letter there. A few days later there was a report in the papers of the death of Mrs Jones as the result of eating tinned lobster, and the chambermaid then imparted to her fellow servants the words that she had deciphered on the blotting pad. They were as follows: Entirely dependent on my wife… when she is dead I will… hundreds and thousands…