The Clue of the Broken Match

Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Title: The Clue of the Broken Match 

Author: not known 

Publisher : not known 

Source book: The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #2)

Dolly Bantry is dreaming an early morning dream when her housemaid Mary arrives precipitately to tell her there is a dead body on the library hearth rug. Dolly’s husband Arthur, Colonel Bantry, thinks she must have imagined it because she usually falls asleep while reading gruesome detective novels. 

In this case the detective novel is The Clue of the Broken Match. And unfortunately we learn nothing much about this fictional book except that Dolly chose to read it last night. Colonel Bantry thinks it must be about Lord Edgbaston finding a beautiful blonde dead on the library hearth rug. Why Lord Edgbaston? Who knows. Bodies, says Colonel Bantry, are always being found in libraries in books but he’s never known a case in real life.

This is before either of them gets downstairs and discovers it’s true: there really is a body on the hearth rug in their library. It’s an unpleasant joke that upsets their lives considerably. But not to worry: Miss Marple will sort it out.

Perhaps you’ve noticed? Some fictional books sound as though they actually might be books, and some really don’t. The Clue of the Broken Match doesn’t sound particularly real to me. Just as some of Christie’s place names, such as Much Benham, Chipping Cleghorn, and of course St Mary Mead, home of the renowned Miss Marple, really sound like genuine towns or villages, but some of the others sound peculiarly fake; Glenshire, Chadmouth and Radfordshire. Just the same with fictional book titles I suppose.

Thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art