The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side
A review of The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side by Agatha Christie – 240223
The ninth book in Christie’s Miss Marple series, originally published in 1962, is distinctly average, overlong and one where you could almost just read the final chapter and get the gist of the mystery and how it is solved. True to form, we are treated to three murders, although the second and third are merely incidental and really serve little purpose than to keep up the author’s average. For good measure, we are treated to a fourth death, which might have been suicide although Miss Marple hints, and the reader knows, that the victim was helped along their way.
The book has two principal drivers. The first is the reaction of movie actress Marina Gregg’s reaction when, as part of the welcoming party at a reception held at Gossington Hall and in conversation with Heather Badcock, a strange look crossing her face, echoing the lines from Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot from which the book takes its title. What had she seen?
The second is the character of Heather Badcock herself. When the astute Miss Marple first meets her, in her inimitable fashion, Mrs Badcock reminds her of another character who died. Heather is one of those characters who is self-obsessed and socially unaware, unable to appreciate the impact of her behaviour or comments on others. It is while she is recounting the occasion when she rose from her sickbed as an adolescent in Bermuda to meet Marina and get her autograph that, first, Marina has her strange turn, and then Heather’s glass of daiquiri is spilt, Marina gives her another one which contains a lethal dose of Calmo, and Heather collapses and dies. Was Marina the intended victim and Heather just an innocent victim?
Much depends on Marina’s backstory. In true movie star tradition, she has had a number of husbands, the latest being the seemingly devoted Jason Rudd, and a sad personal life, her natural child having a mental disability as a result of an illness she contracted during pregnancy and left in a home, and three adopted children who were capriciously abandoned although well provided for. Her first husband appears at the party and his identity really comes out of nowhere although has nothing germane to add to the plot, one of her abandoned children is a photographer at the reception, and two ghosts from the past, Ardwyck Fenn and Lola Brewster, the latter from whom Marina “stole” one of her husbands, are potential suspects. Miss Marple is convinced that the key to the mystery lies with Marina’s children and, of course, she is right.
Astute readers will recall Gossington Hall and its former owner, Dolly Bantry, from The Body in the Library, although for those who are new to the series, Dolly provides an elliptical precis of the case. Miss Marple is showing the affects of advancing old age, taking time to recover from a bout of pneumonia, her eyesight too poor to allow her to knit, and under the care of the suffocating Miss Knight. Miss Marple has to adopt various strategies to elude her carer and the prospect of getting her teeth (dentured?) into a murder mystery peps her up no end, leading her to do extensive research through the medium of gossip magazines into the lifestyles of those involved in the “moving pictures” industry.
Detective Inspector Frank Cornish from the local police and Chief Inspector Dermot Craddock of the Yard lead the investigations for the police but it is really Miss Marple, with her helpful hints and suggestions, that moves the case along and saves one innocent victim from their death.
The book could be seen as a half-hearted satire of the changes that were sweeping villages like St Mary Mead – the arrival of grotesque housing developments on the outskirts of a quaint village and the arrival of the nouveau riche who modify old mansions out of recognition – but that is being charitable. It is an entertaining, easy to read piece of escapism, not one of Christie’s best nor her worst, but a good enough companion to spend a couple of evenings with.
