GUAYAQUIL UNIVERSITY

Pilot Faculty of Dentistry

Topic:

THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE

Matter: English V Course: 5/4

Teacher: Mr. Nefi Galán Cherrez
Student: Giovanna Lisbeth Armijos Agreda
Lective Period: 2021-2022 CII

THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE

LINK: https://english-e-reader.net/onlinereader/the-murder-at-the-vicarage-agatha-
christie

SETTING

• The Vicar
• In Old Hall
• Villages

CHARACTERS

❖ Miss Marple: Single who lives in St Mary Mead, next to the vicar. She is observant
and knows human behavior, recognized in her people as cunning and generally
correct.
❖ Colonel Lucius Protheroe: rich man, who is the church guardian and the local
magistrate in St Mary Mead who lives in Old Hall. He has become deaf and
screams a lot as a result. They assassinate him.
❖ Anne Protheroe: Colonel Protheroe's second wife, young and attractive.
❖ Lettice Protheroe: Colonel Protheroe's teenage daughter from his first marriage.
❖ Leonard Clement - St Mary Mead's vicar and storyteller, in his 40s.
 ❖ Griselda Clement: Young wife of the Vicar, 25 years old and happy person.
❖ Dennis Clement: teenage nephew of the vicar, part of his house.
❖ Mary Adams: maid and cook to the vicar. She dates ("dates") Bill Archer.

❖ Mr. Hawes: Curator of Vicar Clement, newcomer to the parish. He had

sufferedfrom acute lethargic encephalitis before arriving at St Mary Mead.
❖ Mrs. Martha Price-Ridley: Widow and gossip who lives next to the Vicarage,
atthe end of the road.
❖ Miss Amanda Hartnell: spinster at St Mary Mead.
❖ Miss Caroline Wetherby: spinster in St Mary Mead who lives next door to
MissHartnell.
❖ Dr. Haydock - St Mary Mead town physician.

❖ Lawrence Redding: painter who fought in the Great War. He uses a building
onthe Vicarage property as his studio.
❖ Ms Estelle Lestrange: Elegant woman who recently came to town, reserved
forherself.
❖ Raymond West: Miss Marple's nephew, a writer who usually lives in London.
❖ Rose and Gladdie: kitchen and parlor maid in Old Hall, Colonel Protheroe's
home. Gladdie shared with Redding what she heard when Ms. Lestrange visited
Old Hall.
❖ Bill Archer - Local man who has been intermittently incarcerated for poaching by
Protheroe in his role as magistrate.
❖ Inspector Slack - The local police detective, who is active despite his name and
often aggressive.

PLOT

The Rev. Leonard Clement, vicar of St Mary Mead, lives with his much younger wife
Griselda and his nephew Dennis. Colonel Lucius Protheroe, Clement's church warden, is a
wealthy and abrasive braggart who also serves as a local magistrate and is much hated in
the village. One night at dinner, Clement nonchalantly remarks that anyone who killed
Protheroe would be doing the world a favor.
Clement meets Protheroe's wife, Anne, hugging Lawrence Redding, a young visiting
artist; While promising both of them that he will not reveal his adventure, he advises
Redding to leave the village immediately. The next day, Clement will meet with Protheroe
to review the irregularities in the church's accounts. Clemente is called to a farm to
administer the last rites, but he learns that the dying man has recovered and that no one
called him. Returning, Clement meets Redding in anguish at the vicarage door, then
discovers Colonel Protheroe dead on his study desk.

Summons Dr. Haydock, who declares that Protheroe was killed by a gunshot to the back
of the neck.

CLIMAX

The police, led by Inspector Slack and Colonel Melchett, are confused by several
details, including a note left by Protheroe that appears to conflict with Haydock's opinion
on the time of death, and some witnesses who claim to have heard a second shot. Miss
Marple tells Clement that she has a list of seven possible suspects in mind. Other
strange events occur at St Mary Mead. Reporters arrive in town, Mrs. Price Ridley
receives a threatening phone call and Anne Protheroe discovers a portrait in her storage
room cut to pieces with a knife. A police calligraphy expert examines the victim's note
and determines that Colonel Protheroe did not write it. Clement is inspired to give a
much more vigorous sermon than usual, after which he receives a call from Hawes, his
sickly priest, who tellshim that he has something to confess.

Clement arrives at Hawes' rooms and finds him dying of an overdose. Discover the
actual note that Protheroe was writing when he was assassinated, which reveals that
Hawes was responsible for stealing money from church accounts. Melchett arrives and
calls Dr. Haydock, but the operator accidentally connects him to Miss Marple, who
arrives to see if he can help.

While Haydock takes Hawes to a hospital, Miss Marple explains her theory about
the real killer. Marple believes that the real killers are Lawrence Redding and Anne
Protheroe. In love with Anne, Redding decided that they could only be together if she
separated from her husband. On the pretext of asking Clement for advice, he put his
pistol in a pot in the vicarage. He then planted the picric acid crystal in the woods near
the vicarage, manipulating it to explode and create a "second shot" that would confuse
witnesses. At night, Redding made the fake call to Clement to get him out of the house,
while Anne passed Miss Marple's house without a purse and wearing tight clothing to
prove she was not carrying a gun. She recovered the pistol (which had been provided
with a silencer), killed her husband, and left the vicarage; Then Redding came in, stole
the note incriminating Hawes
 Both conspirators confessed to the crime with obvious falsehoods in their stories,
seeming to exonerate each other. Redding drugged Hawes and planted the colonel's note
to make it look like Hawes committed suicide through guilt. Fortunately, Dr.
Haydock saves Hawes life. Miss Marple proposes a trap that tricks Redding into framing
himself; he andAnne are arrested by Inspector Slack's men.

The ending wraps up all the loose ends. Lettice reveals that Ms. Lestrange is his
mother, Colonel Protheroe's first wife, who is terminally ill; Lettice destroyed Lestrange's
portrait in Protheroe's house so that the police would not suspect her. The two set out so
that Lestrange can spend his last days traveling the world. It is revealed that Miss Cram
knew nothing about the fake Dr. Stone's plot, and Griselda and Dennis confess to
threatening Mrs. Price Ridley as a joke. Griselda reveals that she is pregnant, which
Miss Marple deduced, and the couple profess their love again.

Along with the murder mystery plot, the novel takes time to consider alternative
perspectives on the crime idea. Miss Marple's nephew Raymond West attempts to solve
the crime through Freudian psychoanalysis, while Dr. Haydock expresses his opinion that
crime is a disease that will soon be solved by doctors rather than the police.

MESSAGE

This narration seemed interesting and surprising to me, in itself the most despised
character is Colonel Protheroe, even the local vicar has said that killing him would be a
service to the townspeople. So her death raises many suspects, so when Protheroe is found
murdered in the same vicar's study, and two different people confess to the crime, old
spinster Jane Marple exerts her detective skills. Both in the narrative and in real life they
will always have the similarity when it comes to murder cases since everything is a
mystery until the culprit is discovered.