History Literature / TheThirteenProblems

* AgentScully: Surprisingly [[DeconstructedTrope deconstructed]] with Mr. Petherick, the lawyer who features in the first six stories. His role in the PartyOfRepresentatives is "the logical one," and he is quick to focus on hard facts instead of succumbing to superstition, as "The Idol House of Astarte" proves. But his own story, "Murder v. Opportunity," centers on the question of spirit mediums and psychic phenomena, which he refuses to discount outright as most Scullys do. Mr. Petherick explains that, as a "believer in evidence," he is willing to admit that there are some supernatural incidents that cannot be easily discounted based on the proof presented, and furthermore says that there are certain paranormal experts who he trusts immensely. He ultimately takes on a kind of agnostic role--"I am neither a believer nor an unbeliever"--and explains that since the evidence cannot fully confirm or fully deny the existence of the supernatural, he is willing to explore it as a possible explanation when it seems logically sound.

* TerminallyIllCriminal: One of the reasons the killer in [[spoiler:"The Companion"]] isn't turned in is that they're suffering from heart disease and will be dead in a few months (in the end they hold on for six months).

** NoodleIncident: The end of "The Affair at the Bungalow" reveals that Jane Helier has been [[AwfulWeddedLife unhappily married]] at least three times, given that Miss Bantry thinks back to "the first of [Jane's] unfortunate marriages." We never learn any more details about those marriages beyond the initial one ending because her husband cheated on her.

** The overall framing narrative for the collection also counts. Somehow, eleven different people just so happen to each have a personal experience with crime, with seven of them (Dr. Pender, Joyce, Miss Marple, Colonel Bantry, Mrs. Bantry, Dr. Lloyd, and Sir Henry) having witnessed a murder in particular. It's understandable with Sir Henry, as he was a Commissioner of Scotland Yard for some time, but the other six don't have much of an excuse. The odds of seven people having intimate knowledge of gruesome murders are astronomical--the odds of those people being in a room together are even higher.

* GiveMeASign: In "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter", Miss Marple prays for a sign, and shuts her eyes. When she opens them again, she sees the front of a fishmonger's shop, with a fresh haddock in the window, covered with the black spots (the titular "thumb mark".) This leads her to figure out that the murder victim's [[spoiler:apparent dying reference to a "pile of carp" was actually "pilocarpine", known as an antidote to atropine poisoning - thus implicating the man's father as the killer, since he had a store of atropine which he took for his bad eyesight.]]

** The central conceit of "The Thumbmark of St. Peter"--an innocent person's reputation slowly being poisoned by gossip--is also featured in "The Lernaean Hydra."

* LoveMakesYouEvil: The murderers in [[spoiler: "The Idol House of Astarte," "The Herb of Death," and "Death by Drowning"]] are all driven to kill because of their desperate love.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: In "The Companion," Mary Barton suffers from this and SanitySlippage after Amy Durrant dies. She takes a room in Cornwall and slowly becomes more and more haunted by guilt. Her neighbors report that she stays up all night pacing across the floor while endlessly muttering, and she eventually [[DrivenToSuicide drowns herself]] to atone for killing Amy. [[spoiler: Miss Marple realizes that it was all a fake: the "Miss Barton" in Cornwall was the ''real'' Amy Durrant, who'd pulled a KillAndReplace on Mary. The apparent guilt was just a ruse to keep people from questioning the suicide, which was faked.]]

* PhonyPsychic: Mrs. Eurydice Spragg, in "Motive v. Opportunity," is one of these--she claims to be a spirit medium who can contact the dead, and puts the elderly Simon Clode in contact with his deceased granddaughter Christobel. Since Clode was completely devastated by her death, he is easily manipulated by Mrs. Spragg's tricks. Mr. Petherick, Clode's family, and even an expert on psychic phenomena all realize that Eurydice is a fraud trying to con the elderly man out of his massive wealth, but Simon won't hear it. A variant also occurs in "The Blue Geranium" when the killer impersonates a psychic in order to play on the victim's superstition to set up a scenario in which they can kill her.

* PhonyPsychic: Mrs. Eurydice Spragg, in "Motive v. Opportunity," is one of these--she claims to be a spirit medium who can contact the dead, and puts the elderly Simon Clode in contact with his deceased granddaughter Christobel. Since Clode was completely devastated by her death, he is easily manipulated by Mrs. Spragg's tricks. Mr. Petherick, Clode's family, and even an expert on psychic phenomena all realize that Eurydice is a fraud trying to con the elderly man out of his massive wealth, but Simon won't hear it.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Ten of the thirteen stories in the collection center specifically on unsolved murders. There are three exceptions:
** "Ingots of Gold" is about the theft of bullion from a sunken ship and Raymond West's attempts to discover what happened to it.
** "Motive v. Opportunity," Mr. Petherick's tale, is a LockedRoomMystery centering on a LostWillAndTestament between a rich man's rightful heirs and the fake psychic medium trying to con him out of his fortune.
** "The Affair at the Bungalow" is about a mysterious incident from Jane Helier's past wherein someone impersonated her and stole jewelry from a rich woman. [[spoiler: This is a double example because, while all of the other stories are recollections, Jane's is actually a TrialBalloonQuestion about a crime she herself is planning to commit, although Miss Marple's ability to solve the mystery ultimately deters her.]]

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* AssholeVictim: Mary Pritchard, the murder victim of "The Blue Geranium," is a petulant hypochondriac who throws tantrums and fusses over every trivial incident that comes up, all the while accusing her husband George of hating her and claiming that nothing he does is right. Mrs. Bantry outright remarks that if George had gotten fed up one day and killed her, "if there were any women on the jury, he would have been promptly acquitted."

* BaitAndSwitch: In "The Companion," Dr. Lloyd begins his story by talking about a sensuous Spanish dancer who he was certain would lead an exciting, eventful life. The rest of the group thinks that the tale will be about her, but he sheepishly explains that he was wrong--the dancer ended up having a happily mundane life, while the ''real'' mystery centers on two middle-aged English women who at first appeared completely boring.

* CharacterDevelopment: At the beginning of the second half of the collection, Jane Helier is extremely passive and, when challenged to try to solve the crimes presented, can't think of any possible solutions (in "The Companion," she's not even sure of what happens in the ending). However, as the night progresses, she gradually becomes more comfortable with the situation and shows some HiddenDepths--by "The Herb of Death," she's asking intelligent questions and comes up with a genuinely plausible theory for the murder. This in turn allows her to narrate her own story, "The Affair at the Bungalow," as she now feels confident enough to express herself.

* ChekhovsSkill: Mrs. Bantry's knowledge of flowers, which is established early in the second half of the short story collection, comes in handy in "The Four Suspects," as it allows her to [[spoiler: notice the capitalized names of dahlia varieties in a letter and expose the secret message therein.]]
** In "Motive V. Opportunity," it's mentioned in passing that Grace Clode marries a chemist after moving in with her uncle Simon. [[spoiler: He was the person who provided the fountain pen full of disappearing ink to prevent Simon from disinheriting the younger Clodes, as it was composed of water, starch, and iodine, all things that he had in his possession. He's also the person who reveals the scheme to Petherick at the end, implying it was his idea in the first place.]]

* ContrivedCoincidence: In a few instances, the narrator of each tale only learns the truth because of some remarkable coincidence that seems highly implausible. In "The Idol House of Astarte" and "The Herb of Death," both Dr. Pender and Mrs. Bantry receives letters out of the blue from the killers in question confessing their role in their respective murders (Mrs. Bantry in particular lampshades the unlikely nature of this); in "The Companion," Dr. Lloyd gets off a boat in Australia and just so happens to immediately run into the murderer walking nearby; and in "The Blood-Stained Pavement," Joyce is visiting another randomly-selected seaside town when [[spoiler: the murderous couple from the previous year shows up to pull off their scheme again.]]
** The case in "The Blood-Stained Pavement" might not be as contrived as previously thought: [[spoiler: TheBluebeard has pulled off this scheme several times already (maybe even as many as a dozen). There's only so many seaside towns with the right combination of geography and isolation to pull off his signature scheme (remember, he gets caught because he uses the ''exact same method every time''), and by necessity he needs to keep well away from areas he's already used. It's not entirely contrived that someone else who goes to the same kind of places for innocent reasons would run across him sooner or later.]] It being Joyce who does so, however, might still qualify as this trope.

* DatingWhatDaddyHates: In "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter," Miss Marple remarks that when her niece Mabel started courting her future husband, everyone in the family (including Miss Marple herself) told her that it was a bad match and they wouldn't get along, which only increased Mabel's determination to woo him.

* TheDogWasTheMastermind: In "Death by Drowning," there are three main suspects in Rose Emmott's death: her longtime suitor Joe Ellis who was hopelessly in love with her; Rex Sandford, a visiting architect who was the father of her unborn child; and Mr. Emmott, who might have become enraged at his daughter's having a baby out of wedlock. [[spoiler: The ''real'' killer is...none of these men. It's Joe Ellis's landlady, Mrs. Bartlett, who fell in love with Joe herself and was driven to murderous rage at the thought of "losing" him to the adulterous Rose.]]

* DramaQueen: Mary Pritchard, the victim of "The Blue Geranium," is described as such. Colonel Bantry remarks that she ''did'' have a legitimate illness of some kind, but deliberately claimed it was much worse than it actually was and used it as an excuse to treat everyone around her horribly.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Jane Helier's initial attempt to conceal the fact that she herself is the subject of her story, "The Affair at the Bungalow", foreshadows [[spoiler:her concealment of the fact that she herself is the mastermind of the crime which she is describing - though it is just a plan and has not yet been committed.]]

* HaveAGayOldTime: In "The Herb of Death," Mrs. Bantry calls Adelaide Carpenter, one of the suspects, a "pussy woman." She explains that she means "a big soft white purry person," but the constant use of the word "pussy" might raise eyebrows for twenty-first century readers ("What about the pussy woman?" "I don't like pussies").

* IHaveThisFriend: Jane Helier narrates a strange thing that had happened to a "friend" of hers. Everyone at the party immediately assumes this trope, figuring that it was something that had happened to Jane herself. [[spoiler:They were half-right. Jane was the actress in the story, but it wasn't about something that had happened to her, but something she was going to do. She was planning to commit the crime described, and her story was a TrialBalloonQuestion to see if Miss Marple could figure it out.]]

* IfICantHaveYou: In "The Herb of Death", [[spoiler:Sir Ambrose murders his ward Sylvia to stop her from getting married, because he wants her for himself.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: In "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter," Mabel Denman is described this way--she's whiny, self-centered, and prone to fits of hysteria, but fundamentally a kind, good person. It's best exemplified when she outright refuses to allow her husband Geoffrey to commit his father to an insane asylum, insisting that he receive at-home care instead.

* TheLawOfConservationOfDetail: In "Motive v. Opportunity", Mr. Petherick specifically mentions a seemingly-trivial detail that initially appears to have no relevance to the story: [[spoiler:the fact that, when Mr. Clode's new will was written, the housemaid took the pen from a different drawer to the one it was normally kept in]]. Nobody (except Miss Marple, obviously) picks up on this. [[spoiler:The pen was a duplicate filled with disappearing ink. The housemaid was in on the plan, and had agreed to make sure she brought him this pen if he decided to change his will. It was kept in a different drawer so it wouldn't be mixed up with the real one.]]

* LineOfSightName: Played with at the beginning of "The Tuesday Night Club"; Joyce tries to think of a proper name for their spontaneously-made club, so she simply asks "What day of the week is it?" While it isn't stated that there is a calendar in her line of sight, it seems likely.

* SameStoryDifferentNames: The plot of "The Blue Geranium" was later reused in the Literature/HerculePoirot short story "The Lernaean Hydra".

* SpottingTheThread: In "Ingots of Gold", Miss Marple deduces that [[spoiler:the gardener is not a real gardener because otherwise he would not be working on Whit Monday.]]

* WeightWoe: In "The Tuesday Night Club," Miss Clark, the companion to murder victim Mrs. Jones, is "alarmed at her increasing stoutness" and goes on a health course called "banting" (historically the first recorded instance of a low-carbohydrate diet) to try to lose weight. [[spoiler: The murderer, Mr. Jones, uses this to his advantage by concealing the poison which kills his wife in the "hundreds and thousands" sprinkled on top of the trifle the three had for dessert. Since Miss Clark was on a diet, she didn't have any trifle and so didn't become ill.]]

** In "The Herb of Death", everyone at dinner suffers from digitalin poisoning, due to foxglove leaves being inadvertently mixed with the sage cooked in the turkey. [[spoiler:This is done to disguise the murder of Sylvia, who was secretly administered extra digitalin separately]].

* RightForTheWrongReasons: Mrs. Bantry inadvertently stumbles onto the solution of "The Companion" [[spoiler: when she mixes up the names of the women involved. She defends herself by saying it's confusing because the idea of a rich woman murdering her lady's maid doesn't make any sense--it's much more likely to be the other way around. The name slip-up was a genuine mistake, but it turns out that her theory is the correct one.]]

** Sir Henry Clithering starts the collection as a very serious, quiet man who's clearly uncomfortable sharing what he considers personal failings of Scotland Yard. After watching Miss Marple in action, he grows increasingly comfortable and eager to make jokes with his fellow storytellers. The second gathering of unsolved mysteries occurs on Clithering's recommendation and its heavily implied he primarily arranged the proceedings to get Marple's advice on a case.

** In "Death by Drowning," the murder victim, Rose Emmott, was in pseudo-relationship with local NiceGuy Joe Ellis, but had an affair with a visiting architect Rex Sandford. Rose's father makes it very clear that he despises Sandford and blames him completely for the murder.

** Mrs. Bantry in general is constantly described as flower-obsessed; when stories aren't being told, she's either reading garden catalogues or planning her latest border. [[spoiler: As might be expected, this knowledge lets her help Miss Marple solve the mystery in "The Four Suspects."]])

* ImplacableMan: Weaponized by the killer in [[spoiler: "The Companion." Amy Durrant is the titular companion to the wealthy Mary Barton, but knows that nearly every middle-aged English woman traveling abroad looks alike to the casual observer, so she quickly murders Miss Barton and claims that ''she'' was the employer and the real Mary ''her'' companion. The trick works because no one else at the hotel where they're staying has known them long enough to think otherwise.]]

One year later, Sir Henry Clithering is staying with Colonal Arthur and Mrs. Dolly Bantry; asked to suggest a sixth dinner guest, he recommends Miss Marple, citing her brilliant success in solving the mysteries of the previous year. She arrives along with Dr. Lloyd and an actress called Jane Helier. The Bantrys and their guests then take turns to tell real mysteries and attempt to guess each other's, covering the next six stories.

* ReversePsychology: In "The Four Suspects", Dr. Rosen's niece Greta Rosen and his secretary Charles Templeton had been romantically attached. After his murder, Greta visits Sir Henry to plead with him to confirm Charles' innocence. [[spoiler:Her intention in this is actually to throw suspicion on him.]]

* BigSisterInstinct: A villainous version occurs in [[spoiler: "The Companion." Amy Durrant travels to England under an assumed identity and becomes the companion to the wealthy Mary Barton--her own cousin--to kill her and take her identity. Her motivation? She's the eldest of nine children--not only are they poor, but her youngest siblings need expensive medical care for debilitating illnesses. When Mary turned down a desperate plea for help because of a family quarrel, Amy decided that murder was the only way to save her family.]]

* BunnyEarsLawyer: Yes, Jane Helier is somewhat shallow and not exactly the best conversationalist--but she ''is'' an incredibly talented actress. [[spoiler: We get evidence of this in "The Affair at the Bungalow," when she successfully tricks everyone but Miss Marple with her story about a crime that supposedly happened to her--she's actually ''planning'' to commit the crime and was [[TrialBalloonQuestion testing it out.]] It's notable that even Sir Henry Clithering, the former Commissioner of Scotland Yard, doesn't realize that Jane is acting.]]

* AccidentallyAccurate: In "The Companion," [[spoiler: Mrs. Bantry gets the names of the two women involved mixed up, becomes frustrated, and wonders aloud "Why on Earth should the wealthy employer murder the poor companion?", saying it's much more likely to be the other way around. It turns out that she's completely correct in that suspicion--the killer really ''was'' the poor companion, who assumed the identity of the wealthy employer after the crime.]]
** In "The Herb of Death," Dr. Lloyd is surprised to hear that the victim in the case died of digitalis poisoning after eating ducks stuffed with foxgloves leaves instead of sage, remarking that he's never heard of that kind of mistake having fatal results. [[spoiler: It turns out that it ''didn't''--the murderer arranged for everyone to get food poisoning from eating the foxglove, then secretly gave the victim an extra dose of digitalis, correctly suspecting that everyone would simply chalk her death up to a particularly bad reaction.]]

* BunnyEarsLawyer: Yes, Jane Helier is somewhat shallow and not exactly the best conversationalist--but she ''is'' an incredibly talented actress. [[spoiler: We get evidence of this in "The Affair at the Bungalow," when she successfully tricks everyone but Miss Marple with her story about a crime that supposedly happened to her--she's actually ''planning'' to commit the crime and was [[TrialBalloonQuestion testing it out.]] It's notable that even Sir Henry Clithering, the former Commissioner of Scotland Yard, doesn't even realize that Jane is acting.]]

* DatingWhatDaddyHates: In "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter," Miss Marple remarks that when her niece Mabel started courting George Pritchard, everyone in the family (including Miss Marple herself) told her that it was a bad match and they wouldn't get along, which only increased Mabel's determination to woo him.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: In "The Thumb Mark of St. Peter," Mabel Denman is described this way--she's whiny, self-centered, and prone to fits of hysteria, but fundamentally a kind, good person. It's best exemplified when she outright refuses to allow her Geoffrey to commit his father to an insane asylum, insisting that he receive at-home care instead.