Elspeth McGillicuddy sees a murder being committed on a train as it draws up to one she is on. However, when no body is found, the police are inclined to disbelieve her story, as only her imagination. But it just so happens that Elspeth is a friend of Miss Marple’s, and the latter is inclined to believe her friend. Now she has not only to solve the murder, but to prove that one happened in the first place…
This was an enjoyable mystery, but I’d guess it’s not one of Christie’s best (though it’s only the second I’ve read). Although it’s a billed as a Miss Marple book, she plays only an incidental role, being apparently too old to get involved in any proper detective work. Lucy Eylesbarrow, hired by Miss Marple to help out, is however, a good character who I liked a lot. The other characters who were involved in the mystery, were pretty well-drawn-out too, and I liked some of them. The tension was built up well, when it seems as though the murderer could be one of several people; I didn’t want it to be any of them, so it was pretty tense waiting to find out who it would be.
In the end, though, I didn’t find the solution entirely satisfying – in that it seemed to come purely from Miss Marple’s intuition, and I didn’t see how she could really have worked it out. I don’t often guess mystery solutions in advance, but I like to be able to see afterwards how it could have been solved. So all in all, this was not a huge success, but I am sure I will be reading more by Agatha Christie in the future. The two books I have read so far have both been Miss Marple books, so perhaps I will try one of her other series next.
