The Body in the Library (Miss Marple, #2)

by Agatha Christie

Her ears listened unconsciously for the chink of china, but there was no chink of china.

At the foot of it was a little knot of huddled servants; some of them were sobbing. The

modification. It became less impatiently official, recognizing the generous patron of the police sports and the principal magistrate of the district.

What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one’s house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.

Melchett asked: ‘People liked her?’

‘Oh, yes. Mind you, Ruby hadn’t got much come-back. She was a bit dumb. She went down better with the older men than with the young ones.’ ‘Had she got any special friend?’ The girl’s eyes met his with complete understanding. ‘Not in the way you mean. Or, at any rate, not that I knew about. But then, you see, she wouldn’t tell me.’

Being an invalid, he gets easily upset and worried. We tried to persuade him that it was all right, that there was some natural explanation, and that the girl herself would not like the police being notified. He insisted. Well’—she made a slight gesture—‘he was right and we were wrong.’

‘You bet it does. Do you like detective stories? I do. I read them all, and I’ve got autographs from Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and Dickson Carr and H. C. Bailey. Will the murder be in the papers?’ ‘It’ll

Here was a man who would never rail against fate but accept it and pass on to victory.

‘Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid spinsterish face, and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it as all in the day’s work. Her name’s Miss Marple.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said with her old-maid’s way of referring to the opposite sex as though it were a species of wild animal, ‘are frequently not as level-headed as they seem.’