62 pages • 2 hours read
Agatha ChristieA Murder Is Announced
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1950A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Morning Activities in Chipping Cleghorn (Continued)”
Miss Marple spots Dora entering the village café and follows her in. She asks about Dora’s childhood friendship with Letitia Blacklock, and Dora describes Letitia as “pretty” but suggests that intelligence was her best attribute. She also describes her friend in contradictory terms, saying Letitia always enjoyed life but had a “sad” situation. Dora becomes emotional when she reveals how hard her life was before Miss Blacklock took her in. She wants to be helpful to her friend but sometimes gets confused.
Dora claims that Patrick takes advantage of Miss Blacklock and that he has asked her for money several times. She recently saw Patrick with a cup of oil and a feather in the garden, and while he claimed to have just found the items, Dora did not believe him. She also suspects Patrick of rigging the lamp in the drawing-room to short the lights. However, as she explains that “it was the shepherdess—not the shepherd” (165), she stops talking, realizing that Miss Blacklock is standing behind her. Miss Blacklock declares it is time for them to leave just as Mrs. Harmon enters the café. Dora agrees, noting she first needs to buy aspirin from the chemist.
Miss Marple tells Mrs. Harmon she has been thinking about people from her village of St. Mary Mead. She remembers one woman, Nurse Ellerton, who compassionately cared for two older women before killing them with morphine—although she killed them for money, the nurse felt no remorse, as her patients were close to death and died painlessly. There was then a young man who fooled his aunt into disposing of stolen goods and then tried to kill her. Miss Marple also recalls Mrs. Cray, who doted on her son even though he got in with the wrong crowd, and a quiet woman who began isolating herself when her husband was exposed as a forger. Mrs. Harmon guesses that Miss Marple is drawing parallels—Dora with Nurse Ellerton, Patrick with the murderous nephew, Mrs. Swettenham with Mrs. Cray, Edmund with Mrs. Cray’s son, and Phillipa with the wife of the forger. She asks if Miss Marple can think of anyone similar to Colonel Easterbrook, and Miss Marple suggests Mr. Hodson, a bank manager who met his young wife on a cruise and had no idea who she really was.
Miss Marple declares that Mrs. Harmon guessed incorrectly about one of her parallels. Mrs. Harmon wonders if one of them could be Julia, singing, “Julia, pretty Julia is peculiar” (170). Offended, their waitress asks Mrs. Harmon why she insulted her. Mrs. Harmon apologizes, explaining that she had no idea her name was Julia.
Miss Marple is certain that there will be another attempt on Miss Blacklock’s life when Belle Goedler dies. Mrs. Harmon suggests that Patrick and Julia are the prime suspects as they are the correct age to be Pip and Emma, but Miss Marple points out that they do not know the whereabouts of Sonia Goedler, who is also a suspect. Miss Marple says older women are easily mistaken for one another, so Sonia could be hiding in plain sight.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Excursion into the Past”
In Scotland, Craddock visits Belle Goedler, who has only a few weeks to live. She speaks affectionately of Letitia Blacklock, saying it has been many years since she last saw her, and she describes Letitia as having a brilliant mind. Randall trusted Letitia’s judgment in business and relied on her strong moral integrity to guide him. Belle reveals that the Blacklock sisters had an unhappy childhood as their father, Dr. Blacklock, was a “tyrant.” When he died, Letitia cared for Charlotte, who had a “deformity” that made her reclusive.
Belle confirms that Randall became estranged from his sister Sonia when she married the handsome “crook” Dmitri Stamfordis. After the marriage, Sonia wrote to Belle saying she had given birth to twins Pip and Emma, and Belle persuaded Randall to include the twins in his will if anything happened to Letitia. She has no idea where Sonia and the twins are now.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Delicious Death”
On Dora’s 64th birthday, Miss Blacklock ensures her friend enjoys the day. She instructs Mitzi to make her Delicious death cake and gives Dora a brooch. After her birthday tea, Dora complains of a headache and decides to take some aspirin and go to bed. Dora cannot find the aspirin she bought at the chemist, and Miss Blacklock tells her to use the ones on her bedside table.
When she is alone with Phillipa, Miss Blacklock reveals she has made a new will: Aside from her bequest to Dora, Phillipa will inherit everything. Phillipa protests, asking about Patrick and Julia, but Miss Blacklock points out that they are only distant relatives. Julia overhears the conversation and accuses Phillipa of manipulation. Phillipa claims that she does not want to deprive Julia and Patrick of their inheritance, but Julia does not believe her.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Inspector Craddock Returns”
Craddock returns from Scotland and learns that Mrs. Simmons has confirmed her children are staying with Miss Blacklock. Rydesdale also shows him new evidence concerning Phillipa and Mrs. Easterbrook. Craddock observes that Mrs. Easterbrook has fooled the Colonel, but the findings seem unrelated to the case. (The narrative never clarifies precisely what the men discovered about Mrs. Easterbrook, but the details about Phillipa come out in Chapter 18, when Craddock reveals that her husband did not die in the war but in fact deserted his regiment.)
Shortly afterward, Craddock learns that Dora Bunner died in her sleep. A doctor confirmed that the aspirin she took was poison.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
These chapters intensify the mystery and culminate in a second death. In the build-up to Dora’s murder, Christie carefully diverts attention from Miss Blacklock as a suspect by emphasizing her good character: Belle attests that Letitia “would never do anything that was dishonest” (178), and Miss Blacklock demonstrates her affection for Dora by arranging the perfect birthday, which ironically involves “Delicious death” cake. Readers are unlikely to guess that Miss Blacklock can both love Dora and kill her.
The catalyst for Dora’s murder is when Miss Blacklock overhears her inadvertently revealing incriminating information to Miss Marple. Dora nearly exposes Miss Blacklock’s identity when she describes her childhood “affliction.” She also gives Miss Marple a vital clue to how the lights were shorted out: When she alleges Patrick rigged one of the lamps, she cryptically insists “it was the shepherdess—not the shepherd” (165).
Chapter 13 demonstrates how Miss Marple’s extensive life experience has honed her ability to identify patterns in human nature. Without revealing which suspect she is thinking of, she comes up with a parallel character from St. Mary Mead. Mrs. Harmon assumes that the description of Nurse Ellerton represents Dora, but the more fitting parallel is Miss Blacklock, who treats Dora with great kindness before killing her. When discussing the Easterbrooks, Mrs. Harmon’s remark about “that old Tanqueray stuff” is a reference to the late-20th-century play The Second Mrs. Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero (169). The titular character has a disreputable past, and the suggestion is that Mrs. Easterbrook has a similar history. Miss Marple also hits on a vital premise at the end of the chapter when she says, “One elderly woman is very like another” (171). However, she is theorizing about Sonia Goedler and not Miss Blacklock. Here Christie demonstrates how Miss Marple’s theories evolve, occasionally taking a wrong turn before ending up at the right destination.
In these chapters, the third-person narration withholds as much as it divulges, providing enough information to keep the reader intrigued while ensuring that the mystery remains challenging to solve. For example, Belle reveals that Charlotte had “a deformity of kinds” but does not specify goiter (178). Suspense is also created in Chapter 16 when Craddock discovers new information about Phillipa, but the narrative does not reveal that information until Chapter 18. Similarly, readers never learn what Rydesdale discovered about Mrs. Easterbrook, and the narrative never reveals precisely how Mrs. Easterbrook has “hoodwinked” her husband.
When Mrs. Simmons confirms that her children are staying with Miss Blacklock in Chapter 16, Patrick and Julia are seemingly cleared of the suspicion that they are Pip and Emma. However, this is a partial red herring as the character who claims to be Julia is really Emma—Patrick’s lover, not his sister. Emma’s role as an imposter is hinted at in Mrs. Harmon’s bizarre misunderstanding with the café waitress, who is also named Julia; the interaction draws attention to Mrs. Harmon’s line, “Julia, pretty Julia is peculiar” (170).
The manner of Dora’s death provides another red herring, suggesting that the murderer intended to kill Miss Blacklock with the poisoned aspirin. Having trained as a chemist during World War I, Christie used this knowledge in her fiction, with her characters frequently utilizing poisoning as a murder method. The novel’s second murder has a greater impact as, unlike Scherz, Dora is a major character. Moreover, Dora’s character is imbued with pathos, particularly after she describes how hard her life was before Miss Blacklock saved her.
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