The Body in the Library (Miss Marple, #3)

by Agatha Christie

Mrs. Bantry reflected a minute and then applied an urgent conjugal elbow to her sleeping spouse.

Miss Marple’s telephone rang when she was dressing. The sound of it flurried her a little. It was an unusual hour for her telephone to ring. So well ordered was her prim spinster’s life that unforeseen telephone calls were a source of vivid conjecture.

It was true that Miss Marple’s nephew, a writer, and therefore erratic, had been known to ring up at the most peculiar times, once as late as ten minutes to midnight. But whatever Raymond West’s eccentricities, early rising was not one of them.

It’s upset him. All these policemen prowling about. He’s gone down to the farm. Looking at pigs and things always soothes him if he’s been upset.

“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. She comes from the village of St. Mary Mead, which is a mile and a half from Gossington, she’s a friend of the Bantrys—and where crime is concerned she’s the goods, Conway.”

“As I’ve told you, I’ve got a very suspicious mind. My nephew Raymond tells me (in fun, of course, and quite affectionately) that I have a mind like a sink. He says that most Victorians have. All I can say is that the Victorians knew a good deal about human nature.