Nor is she believed, because others saw her outdoors. Next, Mrs Anne Protheroe confesses to committing the murder. Lawrence Redding, the artist who uses a building on the vicarage property as his studio, confesses to the crime. Rather soon, two people confess to the murder. The Inspector scorns the older women in the village, single or widowed, despite their observant ways. The inspector is thorough, but not quite as thorough as Miss Marple in gathering information and making sense of it. Inspector Slack and Chief Constable Melchett arrive to inspect the scene and search for clues. Several in the village did hear an odd sort of shot from the woods, but later than 6:25.

No one, including Miss Jane Marple outdoors in her garden, hears a shot from the study. The note is odd, saying I can no longer wait for you, though it was made clear to Protheroe upon his arrival that the vicar would not arrive before 6:30 and Protheroe seemed perfectly willing to wait at the time. The note is marked with a time of 6:20 pm and the clock is set to 6:22.

A note is found beneath the corpse, along with the Vicar's clock. He calls Dr Haydock, who arrives at 6:55 and estimates time of death as 30 minutes earlier. Upon entering the study, he finds Protheroe bent over at the desk, shot in the head, dead. He meets Redding, who is leaving the vicarage. He is late for the meeting with Protheroe, set for 6:15 pm. He walks there and back, learning that they had not called him. Vicar Clement is called away to a home two miles distant. That evening, the Colonel is found murdered in the Vicar's study. Clement sees Mrs Anne Protheroe in tight embrace with Lawrence Redding, clearly tired of her husband. Both express a wish for him to die, out of frustration with him. Yet almost no one in his village, St Mary Mead, likes him Vicar Leonard Clement endures his public insults while setting up an evening meeting to discuss irregularities in the accounts, and Protheroe's 16 year old daughter Lettice cannot bear him. (may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)Ĭolonel Lucius Protheroe is wealthy, active in the church and a magistrate. The vicar and his wife, Leonard and Griselda Clement respectively, who made their first appearance in this novel, continue to show up in Miss Marple stories: notably, in The Body in the Library (1942) and 4.50 from Paddington (1957) So when Protheroe is found murdered in the same vicar's study, and two different people confess to the crime, it is time for the elderly spinster Jane Marple to exercise her detective abilities. Even the local vicar has said that killing him would be doing a service to the townsfolk. Mary Mead, no one is more despised than Colonel Protheroe.

5.4 Agatha Christie's Marple (ITV series).

5.1 The Murder at the Vicarage (1949 play).

The murder of the vicarage