A Murder is Announced (2/3)

The middle part widens the map. Inspector Craddock travels to Scotland to see a dying millionairess, while back in the village another murder lands on top of the first. The two threads are meant to meet somewhere, and the meeting point has a name: Pip and Emma. The central puzzle now is gathering the clues that link the strands, and exposing the secrets held by those nearest to the action. The dying millionairess is the sort of figure who only appears in mysteries: rich and old, holding the one piece of information the case needs.

Pip and Emma are a brother and sister whose connection to the case keeps growing, and nobody can say where they are. Abroad, according to rumour, or in Scotland. Chipping Cleghorn would be the inconvenient answer. But while Craddock works the official channels, Miss Marple works the other ones. People tell her things they would never tell a policeman, which is a sentence that explains her entire approach. She pieces the story together through observation rather than interrogation, and observation is what the case has been missing. A second murder is ten times the trouble of the first, because every story has now been told once and hardened into place.

Agatha Christie and Alan Plater wrote it and David Giles directed, with the second part going out on 1 March 1985. The company is the same: Joan Hickson's Miss Marple, Ursula Howells as Miss Blacklock, Renée Asherson as Miss Bunner, Samantha Bond and Simon Shepherd as the Simmonses, Nicola King as Phillipa Haymes, Elaine Ives-Cameron as Hannah, Ralph Michael and Sylvia Syms as the Easterbrooks and Matthew Solon as Edmund Swettenham. The serial format gives the mystery room to breathe, and part two uses it to let every suspect keep his or her version of events warm.

The village is on its second corpse and the mystery has grown legs. Craddock has Scotland and a pile of statements. Miss Marple has the truth, and she is in no hurry. The third part will have to deliver Pip and Emma to the doorstep, and the village will have to face what arrives with them.