By the Pricking of My Thumbs

By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968) Agatha Christie (Tommy & Tuppence)

We first met Tommy & Tuppence at the end of the Great War.

Mr. Beresford had once had red hair. There were traces of the red still, but most of it had gone that sandy-cum-grey colour that red-headed people so often arrive at in middle life. Mrs. Beresford had once had black hair, a vigorous curling mop of it. Now the black was adulterated with streaks of grey laid on, apparently at random. It made a rather pleasant effect. Mrs. Beresford had once thought of dyeing her hair, but in the end she had decided that she liked herself better as nature had made her.

They have had further adventures, but now Tommy is looking at retirement, and Tuppence is, well, somewhat bored when Tommy is away.

However, Mr. and Mrs. Beresford had not yet arrived at the time of life when they thought of themselves as old.

A visit to Tommy’s elderly aunt leads to a conversation with another elderly lady, and Tuppence considering a new adventure.

“Yes. I wondered—” she leant forward and lowered her voice. “— Excuse me, was it your poor child?”

Tuppence slightly taken aback, hesitated.

I remembered absolutely nothing about this story except for that line, “was it your poor child?” except for this:

By the pricking of my thumbs— Something evil this way comes.

And I’m not even sure I remember that line from this story.

“I was brought up in a country vicarage, after all. They date things by events, they don’t date them by years. They don’t say ‘that happened in 1930’ or ‘that happened in 1925’ or things like that. They say ‘that happened the year after the old mill burned down’ or ‘that happened after the lightning struck the big oak and killed Farmer James’ or ‘that was the year we had the polio epidemic.’

“I daresay people have liked murderers,” said Tuppence very reasonably. “It’s like swindlers and confidence tricksmen who always look so honest and seem so honest. I daresay murderers all seem very nice and particularly softhearted.

Publisher: William Morrow

Rating: 7/10

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