Summary of The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie

Chapter 1 “The Tuesday Night Club”

‘Unsolved mysteries.’

Miss Marple wore a black brocade dress, very much pinched in round the waist. Mechlin lace was arrenged in a cascade down the front of the bodice. She was knitting something white and soft and fleecy. Her faded blue eyes, benignant and kindly, surveyed her nephew and her nephew’s guests with gentle pleasure. They rested first on Raymond himself, self-consciously debonair, then on Joyce Lempriere, the artist, with her close-cropped black head and queer hazel-green eyes, then on that well-groomed man of the world, Sir Henry Clithering. There were two other people in the room, Dr Pender, the elderly clergyman of the paris, and Mr Petherick, thesolicitor, a dried-up little man with eyeglasses which he looked over and not through.

They formed a Club named The Tuesday Night Club. It is to meet every week, and each number in turn has to propound a problem. They have to unravel unsolved mystery. The facts are very simple. Three people sat down to a supper consisting, amongst other things, of tinned lobster. Later in the night, all three were taken ill, and a doctor was hastly summoned. Two of people recovered, the third one died.

Raymon said that death was considered to be due to ptomaine poisoning, a certificate was given to that effect, and the victim was duly buried but things did not rest at that.

They must describe the actors in this little drama. They called the husband and wife Mr and Mrs Jones, and the wife’s companion Miss Clark. Mr Jones was a traveller for a firm of manufacturing chemists. He was good-looking man in a kind of coarse, florid way, aged about fifty. His wife was a rather commonplace woman, of about fourty-five. The companion, Miss Clark, was a woman of sixty, a stout cheery woman with a beaming rubicund face.

Now the beginning of the troubles arose in a very curious way. Mr Jones had been staying the previous night at a small commercial hotel in Birningham. A few days later there was a report in the papers of the death of Mrs Jones as the result of eating tinned lobster, and the chambermaid then imparted to her fellow servants the words that she had deciphered on the blotting pad.

As a result of the autopsy sufficient arsenic was found to make it quite clear that the deceased lady had died of arsenical poisoning. Supper that night had consisted of tinned lobster and salad, trifle and bread and cheese. Unfortunately none of the lobster remained it  had all been eaten and the tin thrown away. He had interrogated the young maid, Gladys Linch. She was terribly upset, very tearful and agitated, and he found it hard to get her to keep to the point, but she declared again and again that the tin had not been distended in any way and that the lobster had appeared to her in a perfectly good condition.

The inspectors soon discovered a significant fact. After supper evening Mr Jones had gone down to the kitchen and had demanded a bowl of cornflour for his wife who had complained of not feeling well. He had waited in the kitchen until Gladys Linch prepared it, and then carried it up to his wife’s room himself. Jones was not arrested because on interrogating Miss Clark she told that the whole of the bowl af cornflour was drunk not by Mrs Jones but by her.

Everyone has different opinions about the murderer. Joyce decided the companion because he think that Miss Clark hated Mrs Jones for some other reason. And he said that she probably put the arsenic in the bowl of cornflour and all that story about eating it herself is a lie. Mr Petherick said that the husband was guilty. But Raymond said that they all have forgotten the one important factor in the case. The doctor’s daughter. The tinned lobster was bad. It accounted for the poisoning symptoms. And Miss Marple sure that poor girl a murderess. That poor girl is Gladys Linch.

Miss Marple happens to have it upon the truth. Jones had got Gladys Linch into trouble, as the saying goes. She was nearly desperate. He wanted his wife out of the way and promised to marry Gladys when his wife was dead. He doctored the hundreds ands and thousands and gave them to her with instructions how to use them. Gladys Linch died a week ago. Her child died at birth and Jones had deserted her for another woman. When she wasdying she confessed the truth.