51 pages • 1 hour read
Murder at the Vicarage
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Chapters 25-32 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
Clement finds Slack interrogating Miss Cram, who denies moving the suitcase and declares it’s only old ladies’ gossip about Dr. Stone. Clement sides with Miss Marple, who he says is usually correct. Slack responds that he questioned Archer, who has an alibi.
Clement visits Miss Hartnell, who tells him Mrs. Lestrange was not in her house because she not only knocked on Mrs. Lestrange’s door, she took the opportunity to look in all the windows and didn’t see anybody inside. The next woman he speaks to, Miss Wetherby, tells him that on the day of the murder, she saw a certain lady whom she won’t name, but she implies it was Mrs. Lestrange, on the village road, headed toward the Vicarage just before the murder. The third woman, Mrs. Price Ridley, says her maid heard a man’s sneeze come from the Vicarage at the time of the murder. Clement then goes to Haydock’s, and they discuss the idea that Stone is a thief. Haydock admits he knew Protheroe when he was younger and admits that he’s been trying to shield Mrs. Lestrange, as she is an old friend and because she is dying. She was indeed out of her house at the time of the murder, but she came to the doctor’s house, not the Vicarage. He looks at the crystals Clement found in the woods and says they are picric acid, an explosive, and good for burns in the medical world.
Chapter 26 Summary
That night Clement feels oddly inspired and preaches a fiery sermon about repentance that surprises his parishioners. When he’s done, he isn’t happy with himself and can’t understand what came over him. Griselda and Dennis go to Miss Marple’s to entertain Raymond while Miss Marple comes to the Vicarage. They talk about human nature and how Miss Marple enjoys comparing small incidents she’s seen in the village to larger crimes, noticing patterns of behavior. Clement shows her a timetable of the murder that he’s made, and they debate about the suspects and the time on the note potentially not written in Protheroe’s handwriting. When she is about to leave, Miss Marple declares she’s been stupid, that she’s figured something out but can’t tell him in case she’s wrong. She also says the note has never been the real note, baffling Clement further before she leaves.
Chapter 27 Summary
Colonel Melchett arrives at the same time Clement finds a note in his letterbox that he puts in his pocket. He and Melchett discuss the case, and Clement says Miss Marple thinks she’s solved it, a fact that Melchett doesn’t believe. He tells Clement that experts proved Protheroe didn’t write the note. Clement says Miss Marple beat him to that conclusion. A phone call interrupts them, and a hysterical voice says it wants to confess. Melchett tries to trace the number while Clement rushes away because he recognizes the voice.
Chapter 28 Summary
Clement sees the light in Hawes’s rooms and goes up. The curate appears to be asleep in his chair and a crumpled note lies next to him. Clement reads it and then calls the vicarage. Melchett answers and Clement tells him to come to Hawes’s place.
Chapter 29 Summary
The letter is from Protheroe and accuses Hawes of taking money from the church. Clement realizes Hawes has probably taken an overdose of his medication and calls the doctor. The number is incorrect, and he tries again. Melchett is sure Hawes is the murderer because he has the actual letter Protheroe was writing when he was killed, one that proves motive. Haydock arrives and is reluctant to save Hawes only to have him hanged as a murderer, but he does his best anyway and goes with him to the hospital. Miss Marple arrives at Hawes’s rooms. The wrong number Melchett originally called was hers. She sees the note and says it’s good they are saving Hawes’s life and that he will be safe in the hospital from the actual murderer, Lawrence Redding.
Chapter 30 Summary
Melchett is skeptical, and Miss Marple explains Redding’s confession was to divert suspicion from him and Anne. She suspects Anne is totally under Redding’s control. The two lovers needed Protheroe to die so Anne would inherit money because Redding would never run away with a poor woman. Anne called the Vicarage to lure Clement away just after Redding’s earlier visit to the vicar where he said he was going to leave town. This visit was a ruse Redding used to stash the gun in a plant in the study for Anne when she went to the vicarage to shoot Protheroe. Redding and Anne staged this detail so Miss Marple would see her enter without a gun. She shot her husband with a silencer on the gun before she went to the studio to meet Redding. The sneeze the neighbor’s maid heard was the fatal shot muffled by the silencer. They aroused Miss Marple’s suspicion because they seemed so happy when they met for what was supposed to be a goodbye. She thought their apparent joy was unnatural, but they appeared happy instead of upset to divert attention away from the murder they just pulled off.
Redding then went into the study, arranged the note and clock to look like someone clumsily tried to frame Anne Protheroe, retrieved the silencer and gun, then awaited Clement’s return. He contrived to look upset when he met Clement, again behaving the opposite of how one typically would following a murder. Redding kept the actual letter and framed Hawes with it. He disposed of the silencer and confessed with the gun alone and declared it didn’t have a silencer. He had an alibi because he was certain Miss Marple saw him while Anne shot her husband. The shot in the woods came from Redding striking picric acid with a large rock, which further confused the time of Protheroe’s death. Clement caught Redding with the rock still in his hands so Redding quickly decided to use it as a gift for Miss Marple. Hawes called to confess to the vicar after hearing his sermon, but it wasn’t supposed to be a confession to the murder but to the theft of the church money. Redding went to Hawes’s house the night before and planted larger doses of his medication so it would appear Hawes died by suicide. Redding left the letter indicating Hawes’s guilt of the theft and the murder of Protheroe. Melchett says he believes it, but it remains a theory without hard evidence. Miss Marple devises a trap.
Chapter 31 Summary
Miss Marple suggests having Dr. Haydock hint to them that someone saw Redding tamper with the pills Hawes takes and then watch to see if Anne and Redding try to run. They wonder if Haydock will help convict a murderer after he’d declared he would not do so, but when Haydock finds out Redding planned to frame an innocent and sick man, he readily agrees to assist.
Chapter 32 Summary
It works. Redding meets Anne to warn her that he’s leaving because someone saw him tamper with the medication. The police are listening and arrest them both. Slack gets most of the credit.
Lettice comes to see the Vicar and tells him she knew Anne was guilty but didn’t know how to prove it, so planted the earring. She says Mrs. Lestrange is the first Mrs. Protheroe and her mother, and that they are going away together to travel until Mrs. Lestrange dies.
Griselda tells Clement she is going to have a baby. When Griselda sees Miss Marple heading their way, she says she doesn’t want Miss Marple to guess about the baby and start making a fuss over her. She darts out and tells Clement to say she’s out golfing. When Miss Marple arrives, she expresses concern that Griselda is golfing while pregnant. Miss Marple and Clement discuss how Dr. Stone turned out to be a notorious thief with many other aliases and Miss Cram was equally duped. When Clement wonders how Miss Marple knew about Griselda’s state, she says she saw Griselda buying books about motherhood in the bookshop, but that their secret is safe with her.
Chapters 25-32 Analysis
The final section’s primary function is resolution and denouement. Miss Marple solves the mystery, Clement revises his estimation of her, and the arrest of the actual killers restores peace to the village. The narrative provides logical explanations for the actions of all persons of interest and resolves red herrings. Mrs. Lestrange is Colonel Protheroe’s terminally ill first wife who just wants to see her daughter. More clues, such as the use of the picric acid, the fake letter, and the silencer mistaken for a sneeze all fall into place when considered from the correct point of view, from which Miss Marple elucidates.
Clement grows as a character and the theme of The Error of Arrogance in Authority Figures applies as a caution rather than an indictment in his case. He receives puzzling information from three different elderly female parishioners on the same day, but Clement respects their contributions and follows up on each lead. This greatly contributes to his knowledge of the case. For example, Mrs. Price Ridley insists her maid heard a sneeze. This turns out to be the kill shot. Toward the end of the section, the two sleuth characters of Clement and Miss Marple finally sit down and work together in private rather than converse in an interview style with the police present. This physical leveling as they sit and look over a timetable of the crime is symbolic of the leveling of respect. Clement treats Miss Marple as an equal and drops the benevolent superior persona with her. Clement convinces Melchett to listen to Miss Marple rather than accept Miss Cram’s assertion that Miss Marple is simply “meddlesome.” Even Griselda relaxes her angst toward Miss Marple. While Griselda still runs away rather than face a confrontation for which she is not prepared, her motive is respect for Miss Marple’s mental acuity rather than dislike or exasperation as in former times (234). The absence of arrogance in a key character like Clement alters the attitudes of other characters in positions of authority.
The Dynamics of Village life, which seemed so claustrophobic in the previous sections, turns out to be what saves Hawes and solves the crime. The switchboard error that brought Miss Marple to Hawes’s home demonstrates the closeness of the community and the level of care the residents have for each other despite any pettiness or irritations they cause one another. Miss Marple arrives to see the evidence she needs to put the final piece of the puzzle together, and Hawes takes a trip to the hospital, which removes him from further torment. The doctor, who before was so adamantly against convicting murderers, decides to help trap one when Redding’s actions endanger his innocent neighbor. The villagers’ band together at the end, and the good aspects of The Dynamics of Village Life balance the negative ones.
As Miss Marple states from the beginning, The Evils of Human Nature are ubiquitous. The confessions of the murderers momentarily distract her and the rest of the village. The narrative is designed to trap readers, as well. This is because the reader and the people of St. Mary Mead fail to expect the dark side of human nature in people of a certain status or position. They prefer to gossip about love interests because everyone likes love, even if it doesn’t play by the rules. An affair is gossip fodder. It may ruin reputations in a village as small as St. Mary Mead, but the gossips in the village miss the warning signs. The murderers take advantage of the optimism of the villagers. Like Miss Marple, they should always be on the lookout for evil. Lettice’s attempt to frame her stepmother is a complex example. On one hand, it shows that Lettice has no qualms about seeing her stepmother hanged on the strength of the planted evidence. On the other hand, Lettice’s gut feeling and years of dislike turn out to be indicators of the evil lurking beneath Anne’s carefully designed demeanor. Clement despairs at the end that, “in some respects, she is morally colour blind” (293). The theme of The Evils of Human Nature is the one theme that isn’t neatly resolved. It persists as long as people do.
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