The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962) Agatha Christie

This is probably the Miss Marple mystery that has embedded itself most firmly in my mind. There are so very many thing from here that randomly pop up.

Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me!’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Miss Marple is forbidden to garden, and the woman who has come to stay with her, Miss Knight, is very kind, but also overbearing. Dr Haydock prescribes a mystery to make her feel better, and lo and behold, a famous movie star (Marina Gregg) and her husband (Jason Rudd) move to St. Mary Mead in Gossington Hall, once the home of Mrs Bantry (and the location of The Body in the Library)

And of course there is a murder, because this is, after all, a murder mystery.

But of course there are also lots of bits and pieces I love.

“Such a lot of husbands they all have,” said Miss Marple. “It must really be quite tiring.”
“It wouldn’t suit me” said Mrs Bantry. “After you’ve fallen in love with a man and married him and got used to his ways and settled down comfortably–to go and throw it all up and start again! It seems to me madness!”

and this:

He gave it his highest praise: “Ah, there’ll be a lot of wickedness here, I don’t doubt. Naked men and women drinking and smoking what they call in the papers them reefers. There’ll br all that I expect. Ah, yes,” said Mr. Sampson with enormous pleasure, “there’ll be a lot of wickedness.”

Tell me you haven’t heard that before.

“…Just a little, you know–” she tapped her forehead–“wanders sometimes. Ad her memory’s bad. Can’t recognixe her relations always and tells them to go away.”
“That might be shrewedness really,” said Miss Marple, “rather than loss of memory.”

Don’t see how that has changed at all…

And one of my favorites:

And that’s where the element of puzzle has come into the matter, owing to the fact that people cannot remember to use their pronouns properly.

Sadly, that hasn’t changed either.

Was this as good as I remember? It’s hard to say, because I was enjoying my memory of it so much.
Rating: 7/10

Published by William Morrow Paperbacks

 
 

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