Monday, September 19, 2022

The Thumbmark of St. Peter - Agatha Christie - 262 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

The Thumbmark of St. Peter

This is a short story written by Agatha Christie and first published in The Royal Magazine in May 1928 in the UK. It is the sixth short story of the Tuesday Night Club story collection.

The husband, Geoffrey Denman, of Miss Marple’s niece, Mabel, dies. The doctor assumes it was from eating poisoned mushrooms. Mabel is cleared of wrongdoing, but the general gossip is that she probably killed her husband. Denman had a violent temper and also had a history of insanity in his family. Before he died, he made some rambling statements about fish. Miss Marple is called in to assist and throw light on the case.

This is the final story to be told at the regular meeting of the Tuesday Night Club and comes from Miss Marple’s life.

Arriving at her niece’s house which Mabel shares with two servants her a nursemaid for her mentally-ill father-in-law, Miss Marple learns that her widowed niece was the subject of gossip to the effect that she murdered her husband and no one in the area would now talk to her. Geoffrey had been taken ill in the night and died soon after the doctor arrived but the old locum had not raised the alarm about the manner of death. It was thought that he had died after eating poisoned mushrooms. The two servants told Miss Marple that Denman had been unable to swallow and was rambling before he died about fish.

 An exhumation order was granted followed by an autopsy that proved totally without any evidence that his wife is to be suspected. Miss Marple wonders if Geoffrey had committed suicide and used a knowledge of medicine gained in a previous period of his life to do so. Totally confused by the problem, she was in the high street and in something of a silent prayer for guidance when she opened her eyes and saw a fresh haddock in the fishmonger’s window with its characteristic black spots known as the "thumb mark of St. Peter". She realised that the solution lay in the mysterious words uttered by Geoffrey as he lay dying.

Questioning the servants further, they stated that the words were to do with a "heap" or "pile" of some fish whose name probably began with "c". Checking a list of poisons, Miss Marple found one called Pilocarpine and read that it is also an antidote for atropine poisoning. Based on her own eyedrops which contain atropine sulphate she confronted the elderly Mr. Denman and accused him of murdering his son. The old insane man laughingly confessed the crime, committed because he overheard his son planning to put him in an asylum. He emptied his eye solution into his son’s bedside glass of water knowing that Geoffrey would drink it in the night. Mr Denman is committed to an asylum after all and the Tuesday Club congratulates Miss Marple on her success although Raymond points out there is one thing she doesn’t know. 
His aunt corrects him – she knows that he proposed to Joyce earlier in the evening!



A Miss Marple illustration


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