Title: 4:50 From Paddington
Author: Agatha Christie
Number of pages read: 160/217
The first obstacle that the main character(s) have faced is that when Elspeth McGillicuddy reports that she has witnessed a young woman being strangled by a man in the carriage of a passing train nobody believes her. She tells a ticket collector, writes a letter to a stationmaster, and even goes to the police yet no one takes her seriously. The second the obstacle that the main character(s) have faced is that Jane Marple is not physically able to investigate the suspected crime scene because of her age and frailty. But both these problems are resolved when Miss Marple recruits Lucy Eyelsbarrow to search for the body of the victim while working for the Crackenthorpes who live at Rutherford Hall, an enormous property alongside the railroad.
Lucy does find the body but this creates another obstacle. Who does the body belong to? Unfortunately none of the clues Lucy found on the side of the railroad ("a torn scrap of fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale brownish colour." and "a powder compact, a small cheap enameled affair." Christie 38) are any help to identifying the woman. The only thing anyone knows about her is that she is a French tourist who arrived in London several weeks prior. But this fact alone prompts a memory in Emma Crackenthorpe's mind. A month earlier, she had received a letter from the French widow of her brother, saying that she was coming to England. Nobody had ever met her as they married only a few days before Edmund was killed, so who can confirm it's actually her?
Something that I didn't notice about this book was that it is written in third person omniscient point of view. The narrator knows all the actions and thoughts of all the characters. I mentioned in a previous blog post that "The focus on a main character has shifted three times thus far." and I didn't know that this was just a style of narration.
Author: Agatha Christie
Number of pages read: 160/217
The first obstacle that the main character(s) have faced is that when Elspeth McGillicuddy reports that she has witnessed a young woman being strangled by a man in the carriage of a passing train nobody believes her. She tells a ticket collector, writes a letter to a stationmaster, and even goes to the police yet no one takes her seriously. The second the obstacle that the main character(s) have faced is that Jane Marple is not physically able to investigate the suspected crime scene because of her age and frailty. But both these problems are resolved when Miss Marple recruits Lucy Eyelsbarrow to search for the body of the victim while working for the Crackenthorpes who live at Rutherford Hall, an enormous property alongside the railroad.
Lucy does find the body but this creates another obstacle. Who does the body belong to? Unfortunately none of the clues Lucy found on the side of the railroad ("a torn scrap of fur. It was almost the same colour as the wood, a pale brownish colour." and "a powder compact, a small cheap enameled affair." Christie 38) are any help to identifying the woman. The only thing anyone knows about her is that she is a French tourist who arrived in London several weeks prior. But this fact alone prompts a memory in Emma Crackenthorpe's mind. A month earlier, she had received a letter from the French widow of her brother, saying that she was coming to England. Nobody had ever met her as they married only a few days before Edmund was killed, so who can confirm it's actually her?
Something that I didn't notice about this book was that it is written in third person omniscient point of view. The narrator knows all the actions and thoughts of all the characters. I mentioned in a previous blog post that "The focus on a main character has shifted three times thus far." and I didn't know that this was just a style of narration.
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