Hello crime readers and food lovers!  Today we are drinking with Dame Agatha and Miss Jane Marple.   The beverage of choice as we journey to St Mary Mead and murder most foul will be homemade cherry brandy.

I must confess, I was not looking forward to Miss Marple.  For all his pomposity, I very much like Hercule Poirot and I  love the interplay between Poirot, Hastings and Inspector Japp. Poirot and Japp are also crime-fighting professionals which gives them some cred.

I also like the pluckiness of the female heroines we have met so far like Bundle and Anne Beddingfield and the adventure-seeking  Tuppence.  Miss Marple though?  Has always struck me as being just an old biddy busy body.   So I was delighted to read this very early on in The Murder at The Vicarage.

“My duty,”  said Griselda.  “My duty as the Vicaress.  Tea and scandal at four-thirty.”

“Who is coming?”

Griselda ticked them off on her fingers with a glow of virtue on her face.   “Mrs Price Ridley, Miss Wetherby, Miss Hartnell, and that terrible Miss Marple.”

“I rather like Miss Marple, ” I said.  “She has, at least, a sense of humour.”

“She’s the worst cat in the village,”  said Griselda.

Then a bit later on:

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.”

Knowing that other people shared my view made me like this book a lot more than I thought I would.  And I really liked this book!   Despite Marple.

The Murder At The Vicarage – The Plot

Colonel Protheroe has been murdered. With a gun.  In the study of the Vicarage.  It seems like no one in St Mary Mead liked the Colonel.  Even the vicar had been overheard saying that anyone who killed him would be doing the world a service.

As if that’s not all, we have:

• Shennanigans with the handsome  painter who is setting all the female heart’s aflutter
• Suspicious husbands
• A girl called Lettice.  Maybe this is only interesting to me, given I was very nearly called Romaine.
• Irregularities in the church accounts
• False confessions aplenty
• A mysterious woman in the village aptly called Mrs Lestrange
• Suitcases containing stolen silverware and picric acid found in the woods
• Threatening phone calls
• Slashed paintings

It might actually be a good thing that the wicked cat Miss Marple is around to bring the villains to justice!

I LOVED the sense of humour in this book:

Unblushingly I suggested a glass of vintage port. I have some very fine old vintage port. Eleven o’clock in the morning is not the usual time for drinking port but I did not think that mattered with Inspector Slack. It was, of course, cruel abuse of the vintage port but one must not be squeamish about such things.

Murder in The Vicarage  – The Covers

There are some truly bonkers covers for this book.  My favourite of course is Tom Adams’ surrealist vision for Fontana which features a tennis racquet embodied as a vicar.  More disturbing is the cover bottom right which makes it look as if it might have been the KKK who put Colonel Protheroe away!

Even stranger – in these early covers?  Not a Marple in sight!  As much as I am not really a fan, what kind of sexist ageist BS is that?

Murder at The Vicarage – On The Screen

Murder at the Vicarage featuring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple is on You Tube.

Persons of note in the episode are:

• Mark Gatiss as Ronald Hawes the church curate.
• Derek Jacobi as Colonel Protheroe
• Jane Asher as Mrs Lester
• Tim McInnerny as Reverend Leonard Clement
• Miriam Margolyes as Mrs Price-Ridley

“Of course, of course” said Miss Marple. “I quite understand. Won’t you sit down? And might I offer you a little glass of cherry brandy? My own making. A recipe of my grandmother’s”

– Murder at The Vicarage

The Recipe – Cherry Brandy

Unlike Miss Marple, my grandmothers didn’t hand me down a recipe for cherry brandy so I had to find one on the internet. I used this recipe from Larder Love and I really liked the result.  Not a bit like that awful cherry cough syrup which was my fear!   I popped in two star-anise as well as the cinnamon called for in the recipe. The resulting cherry brandy had a lovely subtle spiciness to it.

Other Food Mentioned in The Murder At The Vicarage

Greens and Dumplings

Oysters

Eggs and Bacon

Marmalade

Blancmange

“Oh, we’ll go!” she said cheerfully. “A glass or two of homemade liqueur is just what one needs on Sunday evening. I think it’s Mary’s blancmange that is so frightfully depressing. It tastes like something out of a mortuary”.

Whisky and Soda

The next book, if you are reading along, is The Sittaford Mystery. Snuggle in, this one will see us snowbound in a tiny village on Dartmoor.  

Have a great week!