The people in the room deliver their various theories as to who the murderer is, but neglect to ask Miss Marple, until Sir Henry politely points out the omission. Miss Marple witters on about a similar case involving a local family (to which Raymond cannot see any relevance) until she suddenly asks Sir Henry if Gladys confessed, and says that she hopes Mr Jones will hang for what he made the poor girl do. The letter in the hotel room was to Gladys. Hundreds and thousands refers to sweets sprinkled atop the dessert; Mr Jones had mixed arsenic with them and given them to Gladys to use for the trifle. Miss Clark had not eaten the dessert (due to her diet) and Mr Jones scraped off the poisoned sweets. Sir Henry confirms that Miss Marple is correct. Mr Jones had got Gladys pregnant and used a promise of marriage after his wife's death to induce the girl to commit murder. He then married someone else. The baby died shortly after its birth and Gladys confessed while dying. Some time later, Dr Lloyd read in the papers that Miss Barton drowned in Cornwall, although the body was never found. She left a suicide note which seemed to confess to some crime, and the inquest ruled that she was temporarily insane. Miss Marple, comparing the tale to that of a local fraudster called Mrs Trout, who claimed several dead people's old age pensions, states that "Miss Barton" was a clever criminal who drowned the other woman and then assumed her identity – hence the reason she looked fat – she was simply wearing the other person's clothes. The really significant fact was that the body in Cornwall was never found – this was another part of the deception. It is a tale of Gothic strangeness, featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden, and a devastating fire."

A year has passed and Sir Henry Clithering is once again in St Mary Mead staying as a guest of Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife, Dolly. Asked for suggestions as to a sixth person for dinner, he names Miss Marple and tells an incredulous Dolly of her success at solving last year's mysteries. Dolly wonders if the old lady could solve a ghost mystery of Arthur's. Miss Marple duly arrives at the Bantry home along with Sir Henry, an actress called Jane Helier, and Dr Lloyd. Arthur Bantry tells of a friend, George Pritchard, whose late wife was a difficult and cantankerous semi-invalid looked after by a succession of nurses. They changed regularly, unable to cope with their patient, with one exception called Nurse Copling who somehow managed the tantrums and complaints better than others of her calling. The Companion – first published under the alternative title of The Resurrection of Amy Durrant in issue 274 in February 1930.The title of the book is derived from a collection of short stories penned by Vida Winter entitled Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation; the collection was supposed to contain a total of thirteen stories but was shortened to twelve at publication. Though its title was appropriately amended and its cover eventually reprinted to read simply Tales of Change and Desperation, a small number of books were printed with the original title and the twelve stories. This small press run became a collector's item (one of which Lea's father holds). Many of Winter's fans considered the omission of the thirteenth story a delightful mystery, and all wanted the answer to it. During the course of the story, Lea is asked more than once what she knows about the missing tale, and why it was never written. At the novel's conclusion, Lea receives the long-awaited thirteenth tale as a parting gift from Vida Winter. Sigh. I really, really wanted to like this book. I heard good things about it, and it has many elements I usually love in a novel: a Victorian sensibility, questions of identity and sisterhood (as well as siblinghood generally), meta-commentary on writing, and a plain, quiet, somewhat chilly protagonist who prefers books to people. The protagonist, Margaret, grew up in a bookstore and learned to read using 19th century novels, and there are clear parallels in the story to Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, and so on. The way the author weaves this tale is so haunting and it reels you right into the book. I can not fathom how children can be brought up this way! The story unfolds in a beautiful, well, what should be, a beautiful mansion in the countryside of London. They call the place Angelfield.

The overall theme of dreams and never being too old to be a dreamer was great because it's so true. We should never be too old to dream and to make our dreams come true. There's nothing wrong with chasing what you want. The dreams throughout the story and how they were presented was an interesting touch as well. The Times Literary Supplement (8 September 1932) stated, "It is easy to invent an improbable detective, like this elderly spinster who has spent all her life in one village, but by no means so easy to make her detections plausible. Sometimes Miss Marple comes dangerously near those detectives with a remarkable and almost superhuman intuition who solve every mystery as if they knew the answer beforehand, but this is not often and Mrs. Christie shows great skill in adapting her problems so that she can find analogies in Miss Marple's surroundings." The review concluded that "in general these are all problems to try the intellect rather than the nerves of the reader." [6] Not since Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier has a book so entranced and haunted me . I rarely read a book twice but when this came up for a sit in book group I was so excited as I longed to pull the curtains and welcome in the Autumn nights with this wonderful multi-layered mystery with its gothic athmosphere that gave me chills down my spine.Vida Winter, a famous novelist in England, has evaded journalists' questions about her past, refusing to answer their inquiries and spinning elaborate tales that they later discover to be false. Thirteen is an outstanding legal thriller, so original, clever and accomplished that it should not be missed. It marks out Cavanagh as the heir apparent to John Grisham." - Express (UK) Then recently I came across these books which I thought I would red but had never looked at them again, so I decided to start reading my old interests... This turned out to be the first one! story setting in the world of literature, classical novels and their heroines, a gothic atmosphere, time worn buildings and family history, poetic at certain levels, normal days enveloped in mysteries, multiple layers, unexpected twists!