Murder at the Vicarage

Griselda Clement is vivacious, beautiful, and as unlike a traditional vicar’s wife as Clement can imagine. She is a sympathetic character, due to her youth, humor, and easy manner, for all ages of people in the village who speak to her more readily than they might speak to Clement, who notices his nephew prefers to confide in Griselda.

Her character arc is mildly dynamic. She first sees Miss Marple as just another busybody older woman and dismisses her through gentle ridicule. By the end, Griselda’s respect for Miss Marple grows, and she sees her powers of observation as extraordinary. The narrative treats Griselda’s past through allusion, but this includes a relationship with one of the murderers. That she chose Clement instead of Redding shows a stronger character and greater emotional intelligence than her husband often gives her credit for. Her presence, ideas, and actions that ruffle Clement’s feathers create moments of lightness in the book that balance the other darker, murderous relationship and Mis Marple’s declarations about the evils of human nature, but she also serves as a lens through which Clement examines his thoughts and actions.

Miss Marple is one of Agatha Christie’s most famous detective characters. This story marks her first appearance in a novel-length work. While Miss Marple’s character changes slightly as the series goes on, Murder at the Vicarage displays her essential traits. She embodies contradictions, but she is rarely confused. Her inclination to see the negative side of human nature, her sympathy and understanding towards her fellow beings, her keen powers of observation, and her ability to discern general human behavioral patterns over time are her investigative tools, which she develops in this novel. Her observation and curiosity about the people around her are perhaps her most used traits when solving murders, whether it is by deliberately watching what is happening or, as in Murder at the Vicarage, occupying the right proximity by accident. For example, she captures evidence through her binoculars while birdwatching. Because of her age and tendency to confuse listeners by associating random memories with current situations, others often fail to take her mental powers seriously. While she is the primary sleuth, she doesn’t appear as much as other more minor characters, a pattern that will occur through the Miss Marple series.

Colonel Protheroe is the victim of the murder planned and executed by his wife and her lover. He is deeply unpleasant and no one in the novel likes him. Even the least judgmental character, the Vicar, casually wishes the odious man would die. He is a bully to his family and many villagers. He drove his first wife away and now refuses to let her see their daughter. He is merciless in his enactment of what he sees as justice when sentencing others, something Clement notes he doesn’t approve of to Protheroe’s face. Protheroe replies that Christianity needs to be more militant (38).

Suspect and red herring character Lettice Protheroe is the “wraith-like” gloomy teenage daughter of the victim who feigns disinclination and ignorance when she is truly a keen observer and quite smart, a fact that everyone acknowledges despite Lettice thinking she’s carrying off her affectations. She is one of the only people who sees her stepmother’s true nature and tries to frame her. Her actions demonstrate that the theme of The Evils of Human Nature isn’t relegated to the murderers in the novel. Her snobby, self-centered, devious attitude toward certain people reflects her father’s influence while at the same time, she hated him enough to refuse to wear mourning colors after his death. While at first, she claims she’s the reason for her father’s murder (Redding painting her in her bathing suit), she doesn’t believe this herself. The rest of the village, however, believes her father’s initial feud with Redding is over her, so she becomes a suspect until the affair between Anne Protheroe and Mr. Redding surfaces.

Anne Protheroe is the murderer. She shoots her husband in the head as Lawrence Redding, her lover, directs her to. She is tired of her husband’s bullying and knows her stepdaughter dislikes her. Clement calls her actions “a madness” for a younger man and the prospect of inheriting money. Starting a new life with Redding was the motive for her actions.

Because of the relationship she has with Redding, she is Clements’s shadow double, in love with a younger person and moved to the point of behaving in a manner outside of the usual. While Clement chooses to stay within the mores of society and therefore enjoys a good marriage, Anne does not and suffers the consequences.

Lawrence Redding is Anne’s co-conspirator and is the manipulative brains behind the crime. He is an artist, and a man Clement notes is perfect and charming in a way that he gets everything he wants, and he persuades everyone to trust him (30). Under his charming façade, he is heartless and willing to frame a sick man to get another man’s money. Whether he actually loves Anne Protheroe or is simply using her to get her husband’s inheritance is not clear by the end of the novel.

He is the antithesis character to Griselda, the younger love of Clement who is also beautiful, young, and charming. The vital differences are that Griselda has a sense of morality and cares about people, while Lawrence Redding only cares about himself and values his own selfish goals above everything else.

Doctor Haydock is an example of the standard doctor trope of characters that appear in many of the Golden Age mysteries and which continue to exist in the modern Cozy mystery versions. He is an authority figure who lends medical expertise and often knows the family intimately enough to provide inside information and clues to the detective and narrator. This standard character often becomes a suspect themselves because of their knowledge and attitude toward the world. In Murder at the Vicarage, Doctor Haydock reveals he feels crime and murder are a matter of chemical imbalances in the brain and that the correct treatment would cure evil behavior. He ruminates that he would not turn in a suspect because of his imbalance theory, which makes him briefly a suspect. His confrontation with a truly cold-blooded killer like Redding, who was trying to frame an innocent and sick man like Mr. Hawes, alters Haydock’s position.

Mrs. Lestrange is one of the red herring characters who creates a distraction and is a murder suspect. She is the ex-wife of the murdered Colonel Protheroe and helps illustrate how cruel the victim was to his family, making the reader more sympathetic toward the poor behavior of his daughter and current wife.

This character also creates many opportunities for Christie to reference the rules and character tropes of the detective genre she helped create. Griselda comments that Mrs. Lestrange’s character is mysterious enough to exist in a mystery book. The name “Lestrange” is a little on-the-nose, which is a metafiction technique that allows the author to poke fun at her conventions and success (6).

The new curate, Mr. Hawes, is another red herring character. Redding specifically frames him for the murder. His erratic behavior and illness make him an easy target and a believable suspect for the Vicar and the reader. Miss Marple, however, doesn’t seriously consider him as a suspect. She, much like Doctor Haydock, has enough compassion to see past Hawes’s paranoid behavior. Hawes aggressively and incorrectly suggests the murderer is Archer, Mary’s boyfriend, whom Protheroe prosecuted harshly for poaching. His certainty about this theory and his strange behavior make his paranoia at the random visit from Lawrence Redding at the end easy to dismiss, even though this visit is a vital bit of evidence. The question over Hawes’s embezzlement of church funds initiates the action in the novel, as Protheroe is at the Vicarage to discuss the missing finances with Clement. This sets up the scene for the murder.

The police trope in Agatha Christie’s novels tends to divide into two categories: those who serve as bumbling obstacles and seem almost to act as foils for the characters who earnestly attempt to solve the mystery, and the helpful ally, who, while perhaps not as skilled as the amateur sleuths, do not impede the investigation. Inspector Slack is mostly the bumbler, and his name and generally grumpy demeanor add comic relief and situational irony. He is a mouthpiece for much of the disdain the paternalistic males display toward the elderly women of the village, who show him up with classic poetic justice. Slack and the policemen who fit into his trope category are usually from the lower classes and are caricatures, which contrasts with other more developed characters. Their lack of manners and uncanny knack for giving offense add humor, obstacles, and frustration for the protagonists. Detectives like Miss Marple usually humble these police functionaries when they catch the killer, often despite police efforts. Even his name adds humor, and the characters are constantly saying his annoying abundance of energy belies it. Because of Miss Marple’s demurring personality, Slack ends up getting most of the wider publicity for solving the crime, something the other villagers are okay with, as decent, well-bred people do not seek attention. Because Inspector Slack levels sexist comments at women, and because his comeuppance comes from them, he is a feminist foil. Murder at the Vicarage relies on traditional roles and values of married love and male leadership, but it does set up male characters to experience chagrin when their perceptions of female characters are incorrect. The use of a character from humble beginnings for comic relief, however, is indicative of the classism of the time.

Colonel Melchett is the opposite kind of police presence to Inspector Slack. A member of the upper classes, he is a softening influence on the working-class Slack who would otherwise prove too grating on both the characters and the reader. He is an authority figure who can finesse the outraged Mrs. Price Ridley with correct, soothing behavior and is an ally to the Vicar while he works as a go-between for the police and Miss Marple. His superior character eventually sees the brilliance in Miss Marple’s mind and lets her plan their trap at the end.

Dr. Stone is a classic red herring character. He exists to distract both the reader and the detective from the actual perpetrators. Often in Golden Age novels a second crime happens closer to the end which illuminates the murder and often eliminates the main red herring suspect. While this second crime is usually another murder, the second crime in Murder at the Vicarage is the discovery of an ongoing heist of valuable silver. Despite the difference in the crime itself, it still fulfills its function of both eliminating Dr. Stone from the suspect list and illuminating his presence in the community.