When
an elderly lady becomes an unwilling witness to a murder on a train that runs
beside hers, nobody takes her statement to have any value - nobody, except her
friend Miss Marple. The old lady seems to believe in her statement, since Mrs.
McGillicuddy does not have any imagination. The two women report the murder to
the police. However, strangely, no body is found.
This
leads Miss Marple to hunt down the body. She draws her own conjectures on what
happened to the lady who got murdered, and realizes that it comes down to the
involvement of a family that lives in an estate lying at a curve of the railway
tracks. She employs the resourceful and intelligent Lucy Eyelesbarrow to find
the body, and then enlists the help of Inspector Craddock of Scotland Yard. The
body is found, but the murdered eludes everyone.
In
the meanwhile, members of the family staying at the estate start dying of arsenic
poisoning. When the solution to the murders seems unattainable, Miss Marple
comes to the rescue. She enacts the scene from the first murder in front of her
friend Mrs. McGillicuddy, and thus
exposes the murderer.
This
is the eighth book of Miss Marple series by Agatha Christie. The story, like
every other Agatha Christie story, grips the reader till the end. It exposes
the darker aspects of the human nature. It shows that innocence is not what we
see from outside. It is possible that the person you least expect would commit
a crime is the one who actually does commit it. Again, if you are into the game
of whodunit while reading this book, you might as well give it up. You would
never guess the perpetrator of the crimes.
All
in all, although this book does not reach the level of one of my favourites by
the author, it still is a thrilling read, and I waited with bated breath for
the murderer to be revealed. I love Miss Marple stories, as they mix romance
with detective fiction, and this book lives up to those promises. A nice short
read for the lovers of detective stories.
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