Summary
Miss Marple comes to stay at a prestigious London hotel, Bertram's. Also at the hotel are the highly recognizable Lady Bess Sedgewick and her daughter Elvira Blake. Bess has been adventuring all over the world since the end of the war (WWII) and was rumored to have played a prominent part in the intelligence service during the conflict. Her daughter has been kept at a finishing school, ostensibly to stay safely out of the way, but it has caused Elvira to feel neglected and abandoned by her mother. It's clear that Elvira and Bess are not on the best of terms. The two are in London to hear the reading of the will for Sir Richard Blake, Elvira's father, who has been presumed dead for the past seven years and now can be legally declared deceased for the purposes of executing the will.
Also at the hotel is Selina Hazy, Miss Marple's old friend and a distant relation of Sir Richard, from whom she hopes to receive a small bequest. Selina has a very expensive necklace from her mother, which she keeps in the safe in her room. As she tells Marple, it is the last thing of value that she owns.
That evening one of the hotel maids, Tilly, was strangled on the roof. Another maid, and Tilly's friend, Jane Cooper suspects that the murder investigation isn't being handled with the proper diligence by Inspector Larry Bird. She enlists Miss Marple's help, and the two notice that the hat found with Tilly's body doesn't seem to match the rest of her attire. Jane is certain that the hat is not Tilly's.
Also staying at the hotel are an assortment of characters: Canon Pennyfather the curate, Mr. Mutti the hat designer, and Mr. Malinowski, the latter two both mysterious Germans.
As the will-reading approaches, Bess Sedgewick snags the lawyer, Mr. Curtain, who has been given control of Sir Blake's estate while he has been missing over the past seven years. Bess has become aware of some irregular proceedings with the accounts and demands to see them. Curtain seems visibly nervous at the prospect.
Jane and Miss Marple peruse Tilly's diary and on the night of her murder she wrote, "123 money received." Marple gives Tilly an assignment to snoop around the hotel in her guise as maid. She starts with Mickey and we find that he's an artist who's work prominently figures a woman in a red cloak. He has set up his easel is in a utility room where he can hear conversations through the duct work. He overhears people speaking in German and snippets about travel papers and South America. Mickey tells Inspector Bird and wonders if there are Nazis present.
The next evening, the event occurs. While all the guests are in the dining room for dinner, someone floods the bath of the room above, shorting out the lights below and driving everyone into the lobby where they have a clear view of the street outside. They observe while Bess Sedgewick approaches the front door of the hotel, only to be driven back by a gunshot. Momentarily startled, Bess pauses in the street and the doorman Mickey comes to her rescue. No sooner does he reach her than he is shot in the back by the unseen gunman, and he collapses to the pavement. The woman in the street draws her own gun and returns fire to the figure in the window, but it is revealed that this woman is not Bess but her daughter Elvira.
Inspector Bird races to the room where the shot supposedly came from but he finds it bolted from the inside and when broken open the room is empty.
Returning to her room after the kerfuffle has died down, Selina Hazy discovers that the necklace she left in the safe has disappeared.
What Really Happened
There are four mysteries that Miss Marple resolves, over the course of this story.
The most straightforward is that of the missing necklace. The answer is that the twins are expert jewel thieves and safe-crackers. While one of the twins pretended to be both brothers, giving them both an alibi, the other brother was up in Selina's room, picking the lock on the door and cracking the safe.
Second, the artwork on the walls of the Bertram's Hotel as well as Mr. Curtains office were ostensibly copies and reproductions of great works of art. In reality, these were the original paintings. Mr Humphries, the hotel manager, and Mr Curtain were running a scheme whereby former Nazis fleeing the post-war trials for war-crimes would use Blake Air to travel from Germany into London to stay at Bertrams. From there, fake travel documents would be created to allow them to travel onward to South America.
As payment for this clandestine service, the German officials would bring with them priceless works of art, appropriated from German museums and the family estates around Berlin. These would be put on display at the hotel and wealthy prospective buyers would come and stay to pick out their selection and arrange payment to Mr Curtain.
One such wealthy buyer was revealed to be Amelia Walker, who was discovered with a painting hidden in her piano. Canon Pennyfather was not English at all, but was one of the escaping Nazis who supplied a painting as payment for services. Ladislaus Malinowski, who pretended to be a former Nazi, was in fact Jewish and an escapee from the concentration camps. He was now employed to hunt down fleeing war criminals, and with Mr. Mutti, was on the trail of Pennyfather. They succeeded in exposing the false Canon.
Mr. Curtain, the lawyer for Richard Blake's estate, was not only an art thief but also an embezzler. Blake had entrusted to him his vast fortune to be held in trust for his wife and daughter. However, Curtain had taken the money to use for himself, hoping that no one would ever go over the books and be able to recognize his misdeeds. Fortunately, Bess caught him as he was attempting to burn critical documents, and his shady bookkeeping was discovered.
Bess Sedgewick, the former wife of Sir Richard Blake, was once previously married to the head doorman, Mickey Gorman. Bess was married when she was sixteen and ran off to northern Ireland to live a wild life with him. It was Bess who was the red-cloaked figure in Mickey's paintings. Eventually, she was forced by her wealthy family to leave her impoverished husband and move on to more suitable matches.
Her secret was that when they separated she did not formally seek a divorce or annulment, thinking that her wild escapade in Ireland could be forgotten. As a result however, her many subsequent marriages were, in reality, not valid. Her inheritance in the will was dependent on her being the wife of Richard Blake, and if that was called into question, she could not legally inherit anything. Consequently, she could pass nothing on to her daughter.
Elvira Blake was aware of the story of her mother's adventure with Mickey Gorman. She suspected that Mickey was actually her father, and not Richard Blake. If that were true, as with her mother, Elvira would inherit nothing based on the terms of the will. She thought that Mickey was in the hotel to blackmail her mother over this information, and she could not risk that it might be made public. This was the motivation that drove Elvira to kill Mickey Gorman by luring him out into the street with the help of her friend Bridget.
It was actually Elvira who killed Tilly on the roof of the hotel. Tilly had befriended Mickey Gorman and during their chats while Gorman was painting, he revealed that he was married to Bess Sedgewick. Tilly used that information to blackmail Elvira, which was why she was able to afford expensive jewelry. As the reading of the will approached, Elvira again felt that she could not risk the information becoming public.
Joan Hickson Version
The Joan Hickson version had a smaller cast and fewer plot points. The plotline of the twins who were jewel thieves was entirely omitted, as was Mr. Mutti and Amelia Walker, the jazz singer. Bess Sedgewick was a less sympathetic character, while her daughter was possibly more likeable, and the lawyer was not a corrupt embezzler. The hotel is again at the heart of a criminal syndicate, but this time it isn't a ring of art thieves, but a more general gang of criminals who rob trains and transport the money out of the country, with Bess Sedgewick as the mastermind at its head.
This version introduced an awkward uncle for Elvira. All the plot lines were less vivid, and more inclined to fade into the background. Miss Marple, took a slightly more direct hand in the uncovering of the mystery
Cast of Characters
1. The Energetic Young Woman. Miss Jane Cooper, a maid at the Bertram's Hotel and friend to the victim. She worked closely with Miss Marple to unravel the mystery.
2. The Efficient Professional. Bess Sedgewick Wife of Lord Richard Blake and mother of Elvira Blake. Hero during the war. Adventurer and doer of daring exploits. It is she who has always managed Elvira's life, leading to feelings of both restriction and neglect.
3. The Batty Eccentric. Selina Hazy, a upper class but penurious friend of Miss Marple
3.5 The Cloud-headed Girl. Bridget Milford , Elvira's friend, afflicted by polio at a young age so that she has lost the use of her right arm and hand. Wracked with guilt over her friend, Elvira is very attentive, but overshadows Bridget in all social interactions.
5. The Lawyer. Mr. Curtain, the crooked manager of Lord Blake's funds
6. The Vicar. Canon Pennyfather. He turned out to be a false cleric who was actually a Nazi escapee in disguise.
7. The Specialist. Ladislaus Malinowski, race car driver, a Nazi hunter who tracks down war criminals. He is pivotal in uncovering the role of Bertram's Hotel in smuggling Germans to Argentina.
8. The Policeman. Inspector Bird, an intelligent young man who was hardened by his experiences during the war
9. The Temptrix. In her past, Lady Bess Sedgewick had been married multiple times. The first was at sixteen when she ran away with Mickey Gorman her family's Irish groom. Later, the story mentions Lord Coniston, then John Sedgwick and finally Lord Richard Blake. The latter marriages were not valid in the eyes of the law, since she was never formally divorced from Gorman, but she was convinced that this early marriage wasn't legally binding. Amelia Walker, the jazz singer, says that Bess took her husband "and she didn't give him back."
10. The Rake. To a greater or lesser extent Ladislaus Malinowski is presented as a cassanova who has successfully seduced both Bess Sedgewick and her daughter, Elvira. In the McEwan version, this role is greatly subdued and Ladislaus agrees to stop pursuing Elvira at Bess's request out of respect for their work together. In the Joan Hickson version, he defies Bess's protest.
11. The Rival. Mickey Gorman, the head doorman, Husband of Lady Bess Sedgewick when she was very young but he was ultimately abandoned and Bess later married the immensely wealthy Richard Blake. Mickey appeared in London years later hoping to possibly rekindle a relationship with Bess, but he felt he had to wait until his rival, Blake, was legally declared dead.
12. The Mirror. Mother Bess Sedgewick and Daughter Elvira Blake are mirrors of each other. While Bess was a patriot during the war, her neglect of her daughter made Elvira bitter, though no less decisive in her actions.
Jane Cooper is presented as a Mirror of Jane Marple, someone who "notices things" and is very effective in sorting out the details of the mystery. The two work together, with Miss Cooper intrepidly investigating on her own. At least initially, the two have similar relationships with Inspector Bird, who first dismisses them but then learns to rely on their insights.
13. The Loving/Lonely Wife. While married to Mickey Gorman, Bess was happy to remain the dutiful wife in the remote Irish village of Ballygowan. When her family found a way to break up the marriage, she left Mickey but turned to a rebellious life.
14. The Housekeeper The hotel manager Mr Humphries
15. The Maid. Jane Cooper, Tilly Rice, the hotel maids.
16. The Daughter. Elvira remembers a time when her father Richard Blake would bring her to live in the Bertram Hotel as a young girl. "Just like when I was little, and Daddy took me for a stroll." There, she learned all its secret passages and back stairs.
18. The Industrialist. Sir Richard Blake. Owner of Bertram's Hotel. Now deceased.
20. The Dubious Man from India - The Overseas Connection. Mr Woody Mutti. In this case, the overseas connection is with Germany and Mr. Mutti is posing as a hat maker. His family's art was stolen during the war and he assists Malinowski in tracking down the thieves.
21. The Social Outcast. Amelia Walker is a celebrated Jazz singer from America and she is also African-American. Her undoubted talent falls short of respectability for the traditional Bertram's Hotel, as the hotel manager bluntly tells her. Amelia is the buyer of the stolen art.
The Twins. Jack and Joel Britten, Jewel Thieves
A. The Time Gap. Both Elvira and Miss Marple remember visiting Bertram's Hotel when they were young girls. Also, see the ominous event below.
B. The Ominous Event. Bess ran off with Mickey and married him in Ireland, altering her life forever. Her failure to obtain a divorce precipitated the disastrous events of the story.
C. The Obscure Relationship. The Lady Bess Sedgewick is still married to the doorman Mickey Gorman.
D. The Convoluted Will. While the will seems straightforward it does stipulate that the proceeds go to Blake's wife and daughter. It is the suspicion that their relationships might not be valid that motivates the murders.
E. The House. The eponymous Bertram's Hotel.
Not Used:
4. The Doctor.
17. The Cantankerous Old Woman/ Cruel Old Man.
19. The Politician.
22. The Shopkeeper.
Questions.
At the beginning of the story, we see Bess receive a threatening letter with the word "DIE" on it. The envelope is pushed under her hotel room door, and she looks down the hallway in surprise as if to see who delivered it. However, at the reveal, we learn that Bess is writing these letters to herself, to throw any suspicion off of herself.
Tilly wrote in her diary, "123 money received." Initially, we surmised that this referred to the room number of the person who was being blackmailed. That turned out not to be the case, and no further explanation was offered.
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