A Pocket Full of Rye

For the A. J. Cronin novel, see A Pocketful of Rye.

A Pocket Full of Rye

First UK edition
Author	Agatha Christie
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Crime novel
Publisher	Collins Crime Club
Publication date	9 November 1953
Media type	Print (hard~ & paperback)
Pages	192 (1st ed. hardback)
Preceded by	After the Funeral
Followed by	Destination Unknown

A Pocket Full of Rye is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 9 November 1953, and in the US by Dodd, Mead & co. the following year. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6) and the US edition at $2.75. The book features her detective Miss Marple. Like several of Christie's novels (e.g., Hickory Dickory Dock and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe) the title and substantial parts of the plot reference a nursery rhyme, in this case "Sing a Song of Sixpence".

Miss Marple travels to the Fortescue home to offer information on the maid, Gladys Martin. She works with Inspector Neele until the mysteries are revealed.

Plot summary

When wealthy businessman Rex Fortescue dies after drinking his morning tea, the police are called in to investigate. The cause of death is poisoning by taxine, an alkaloid poison obtained from the leaves or berries of the yew tree, not in his tea but ingested earlier at breakfast. Searching his clothing, the police find one pocket full of rye, a fact not easily explained. Rex's wife Adele is the main suspect in the murder. Son Lancelot and his wife Pat are travelling from Kenya to London, at the invitation of his father, per Lance. At Paris, he wires that he will be home next day. Police meet him at the airport. The day Lance arrives at Yewtree Lodge, leaving his wife in London, his stepmother, Adele, dies of cyanide in her tea, and a few hours later, the maid Gladys Martin is found strangled in the yard, with a clothes pin put on her nose.

Inspector Neele is working full-time with the aid of Sergeant Hay on these murders, interviewing all at the office and in the home. The older son, Percival, tells the Inspector that his father was erratic and ruining the business. After the story of the three murders is in the newspapers, Miss Marple arrives at Yewtree Lodge, as she can shed light on Gladys Martin. Gladys learned serving and cleaning at Miss Marple's home. Miss Ramsbottom invites Miss Marple to stay at Yewtree Lodge. Inspector Neele agrees to work with Miss Marple, seeing that she can talk with people in a different way than he can. Neele learns that the taxine was ingested in marmalade, with a new jar put out at breakfast, used by Rex alone. That jar was tossed in the yard and found by police. When Miss Marple and Inspector Neele discuss the case, he shares that information, and she asks him if he has asked about blackbirds, having seen the pattern of an old children's rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence. When he does, he learns of dead blackbirds on Rex's desk at home, a pie whose contents were removed and replaced with dead blackbirds, and from Lance, of the Blackbird Mine in Africa.

The Blackbird Mine was suspected of having gold, found by Mr MacKenzie. Rex Fortescue investigated the land after investing capital in it. He left MacKenzie there to die, returning alone and owning the land that he felt was of no value. The land is in east Africa. There had been a scene, when Mrs MacKenzie, decades earlier, charged Rex with her husband's death, promising to teach her children to avenge their father's death. Both the Inspector and Miss Marple suspect that the daughter is in the household under another name, as the son died in the war. The Inspector suspects Mary Dove, the housekeeper, and tells her so. Jennifer Fortescue tells Miss Marple she is, and the Inspector confirms it. Jennifer put out the dead blackbirds near Rex to remind him of his past offense. She knew her mother's vengeance lesson was wrong. Miss Marple and Inspector Neele realize this gave the theme to the murderer. Miss Marple explains what Gladys did: put the poison in the marmalade not knowing it was poison, and the rye in his pocket, at the direction of her boyfriend, Albert Evans. Dove immediately blackmails Jennifer; Inspector Neele says if Dove pays the money back, he will not charge her.

Miss Marple explains that Albert Evans is Lance, Rex's son. Lance wants money; the deed to the Blackbird mine will do, as uranium has been found there. He arranged the murder of his father to stop the loss of cash and to deal only with his brother. He murdered his stepmother because she inherited a large amount of cash, but only if she lived thirty days after her husband. The firm would not continue with so much cash going out, between his father's bad decisions and her inheritance. He had already killed Gladys, so she could tell no tales, leaving the clothes pin that so offends Miss Marple to match the line in the rhyme, "and pecked off her nose." Gladys was very easy to persuade to assist him, never questioning his motives, and flattered by his attentions. She believed she was adding a truth drug to the marmalade, to help Albert when he met with Rex. Miss Marple deduces this from knowing Gladys and seeing her things. When Miss Marple returns home, a letter from Gladys awaits her. She explains all she did and begs Miss Marple's help, as she does not know what to do. The letter was waylaid in the post. Enclosed is a photo of her and her Albert, clearly Lance Fortescue. Inspector Neele's case will be very strong.

Characters

• Miss Marple: She trained Gladys in the duties of service in a home or at a restaurant, and feels responsible when she reads of the murders where Gladys works.
• Miss Griffith: Head typist at the offices of Rex Fortescue. She calls his doctor.
• Miss Irene Grosvenor: Competent, beautiful blonde secretary in the offices of Rex Fortescue, his personal secretary.
• Miss Somers: Newest secretary in the office of Rex Fortescue, never able to know when water is boiling for tea.
• Inspector Neele: Detective inspector of the CID (Criminal Investigation Division) who handles the death of Rex Fortescue and the following two deaths at the Fortescue home. He is quick-thinking, making sure of the cause of death rapidly, so it is known to be murder.
• Professor Bernsdorff: Pathologist at St Jude's hospital who discerns the cause of death for Rex.
• Sergeant Hay: Assists Inspector Neele. He finds the discarded jar of marmalade in the yard.
• Rex Fortescue: Wealthy, unscrupulous businessman in London who dies at his office. He is over 60 years old, and suspected by his sons of a serious disease which impairs his functions in the business, Consolidated Investments.
• Percival Fortescue: Eldest son of Rex, working with him in the business. He is more conservative in his investments than his father is. He is called either Percy or Val and is about 30 years old. He seems to get what he wants, and has the most to gain from the deaths of his father and stepmother, but could not have killed the latter.
• Jennifer Fortescue: Wife of Percival for the last three years. They met when she nursed him back to health from pneumonia. She is bored in her life as a wife, without the focus of professional nursing. She was Ruby MacKenzie before she married.
• Lancelot Fortescue: Second son of Rex, nickname Lance. The two argued eleven years earlier, causing a breach, but he retains a role in Consolidated Investments as junior partner. He lives in Kenya, coming home apparently to reconcile with his father because he is very happy with Pat, and wants to settle down. He is handsome, attractive, clever and completely unscrupulous.
• Pat Fortescue: Recently married wife of Lance. They met in Kenya, where she went to start life afresh after losing two husbands, first one to the war, second one to suicide (Lord Frederick Anstice). She loves Lance and he loves her. She is unaware of Lance's crimes, believing the stories he tells of his father sending for him. Miss Marple advises her to return to her childhood home, if troubles should find her in her life again.
• Elaine Fortescue: Daughter of Rex, and youngest child, in her twenties. She is in love and wants to marry, but her father forbids the marriage. Once he dies, she tells her brother she will marry in a month, and start a school with her husband. She is the only person to shed a tear for her father's death.
• Gerald Wright: A schoolmaster who Elaine loves. He comes to the area when Elaine calls him after her father dies.
• Miss Ramsbottom: Aunt Effie, older sister of Rex's first wife Elvira, the mother of their children. She is stern regarding moral behaviour, yet does not call out Lance's lie as to the time he was with her on the day of his arrival. She spends time with visiting missionaries, and is over 70 years old.
• Adele Fortescue: Second wife of Rex, about thirty years younger than he is, about the age of his sons. They have been married two years. She is a beautiful woman who loves expensive things, described by Mary Dove as "a sexy piece".
• Vivien Edward Dubois: Golf and tennis partner, and lover of Mrs Fortescue. He is the sole heir in her will.
• Mary Dove: Housekeeper for Yewtree Lodge. She is competent and calm in the face of murder.
• Mrs Crump: Cook for the Fortescue household, who takes umbrage at the Inspector's suggestion that food she prepared would poison anyone.
• Mr Crump: Serves as butler, not very well, but he is a package deal with Mrs Crump.
• Gladys Martin: Parlour maid at Yewtree Lodge, the family mansion of the Fortescue family, for about two months.
• Albert Evans: The boyfriend of Gladys, who she discusses with Mrs Crump. He is a pose by Lance Fortescue.
• Ellen Curtis: Housemaid at Yewtree Lodge for several years.
• Mrs MacKenzie: Widow of Mr MacKenzie, who found a potential gold mining field in East Africa and sought capital from Rex, twenty years before the story opens. Rex left him there to die. Rex still owns the land, and claimed that it was worthless, as to gold. She is living in Pinewood private sanatorium. She no longer speaks with her daughter as she only argues with her daughter.
• Donald and Ruby MacKenzie: The two children of the MacKenzies, ages 9 and 7 when their father died. Their mother raised them to avenge their father's death. Son was killed early in the Second World War.

Literary significance and reception

Philip John Stead in The Times Literary Supplement, 4 December 1953 wrote that "Miss Christie's novel belongs to the comfortable branch of detective fiction; it never harrows its readers by realistic presentation of violence or emotion or by making exorbitant demands on their interest in the characters. Crime is a convention, pursuit an intellectual exercise, and it is as if the murderer of the odious financier did but poison in jest. The characters are lightly and deftly sketched and an antiseptic breeze of humour prevails. It is a pleasure to read an author so nicely conscious of the limitations of what she is attempting." He concluded, "Miss Christie has a reputation for playing fair with the reader who likes to assume detective responsibility, and also for being one too many for him. In the present case it may be felt that the hidden mechanism of the plot is ingenious at the expense of probability, but the tale is told with such confidence that (like murder itself, in this pastoral atmosphere) it does not matter very much."

Maurice Richardson in The Observer (15 November 1953) posited, "Not quite so stunning as some of Mrs Christie's criminal assaults upon her readers; the soufflé rises all right, but the red herrings aren't quite nifty enough. But how well she nearly always writes, the dear decadent old death-trafficker; they ought to make her a Dame or a D. Litt."

Robert Barnard: "Super-stockbrokerbelt setting, and quite exceptionally nasty family of suspects. (Christie usually prefers to keep most of her characters at least potentially sympathetic as well as potential murderers, but here they are only the latter). Something of a re-run of Hercule Poirot's Christmas (loathsome father, goody-goody son, ne'er-do-well son, gold-digger wife, etc.), but without its tight construction and ingenuity. And the rhyme is an irrelevancy. Still, a good, sour read."

The poison

The aril, the fleshy part of the berry, is the only part of the yew that is non-toxic. The seeds inside the berry contain a high concentration of taxine and are poisonous if chewed. Pets that chew on yew branches or leaves have become ill. Interestingly, one of the characters in the novel remarks that Taxine has "no medical uses," which was correct at the time. In 1963, Taxol which is a member of the Taxine family, was found to be one of the most potent and effect chemotherapy drugs for the treatment of solid tumors.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Adapted into a Russian film in 1983 (using the Russian edition's translated title, The Secret of the Blackbirds) with Estonian actress Ita Ever as Miss Marple.

"A Pocket Full of Rye" was the fourth transmitted story in the BBC series of Miss Marple adaptations, which starred Joan Hickson as the elderly sleuth. It was first broadcast in two parts on 7 & 8 March 1985. Despite remaining faithful to the novel, apart from giving the title as "A Pocketful of Rye", the characters of Mrs MacKenzie, Gerald Wright and Elaine Fortescue did not make an appearance. In the end the murderer dies in a car crash, while there is no such thing in the novel.

The novel was adapted for the fourth series of the British television series Marple broadcast on ITV on 6 September 2009, starring Julia McKenzie as the title character.

Publication history

• 1953, Collins Crime Club (London), 9 November, hardcover, 192 pp.
• 1954, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), hardcover, 211 pp.
• 1955, Pocket Books (New York), paperback, 186 pp.
• 1958, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), paperback, 191 pp.
• 1964, Ulverscroft Large-print ed., ardcover, 191 pp.
• 1981, Greenway ed. of collected works (William Collins), hardcover, ISBN 0-00-231681-1.
• 2006, Marple facsimile ed. (of 1953 UK 1st ed.), 3 January 2006, hardcover, ISBN 0-00-720852-9.

The novel was first serialised, heavily abridged, in the UK in the Daily Express starting on Monday 28 September, running for fourteen instalments until Tuesday 13 October 1953.

The novel was first serialised in the US in the Chicago Tribune in forty-two parts from Monday, 11 January to Saturday, 27 February 1954.

External links

• A Pocket Full of Rye at the official Agatha Christie website
• Tayna chyornykh drozdov (Russian: 1983) at IMDb
• A Pocket Full of Rye (1985) at IMDb
• Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008) at IMDb