Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1971
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Source ISBN: 9780008196622
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007422623
Version: 2017-04-11
To Daphne Honeybone
Contents
10. ‘Oh! Fond, Oh! Fair, The Days That Were’
22. Miss Marple Tells Her Story
In the afternoons it was the custom of Miss Jane Marple to unfold her second newspaper. Two newspapers were delivered at her house every morning. The first one Miss Marple read while sipping her early morning tea, that is, if it was delivered in time. The boy who delivered the papers was notably erratic in his management of time. Frequently, too, there was either a new boy or a boy who was acting temporarily as a stand-in for the first one. And each one would have ideas of his own as to the geographical route that he should take in delivering. Perhaps it varied monotony for him. But those customers who were used to reading their paper early so that they could snap up the more saucy items in the day’s news before departing for their bus, train or other means of progress to the day’s work were annoyed if the papers were late, though the middle-aged and elderly ladies who resided peacefully in St Mary Mead often preferred to read a newspaper propped up on their breakfast table.
Today, Miss Marple had absorbed the front page and a few other items in the daily paper that she had nicknamed ‘the Daily All-Sorts’, this being a slightly satirical allusion to the fact that her paper, the Daily Newsgiver, owing to a change of proprietor, to her own and to other of her friends’ great annoyance,