The Murder at the Vicarage

The Murder at the Vicarage is a work of detective fiction by the British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 20 October 1930. The Reverend Leonard Clement, the vicar of St Mary Mead, narrates the story. He lives with his much younger wife, Griselda, and his nephew, Dennis. Colonel Lucius Protheroe, Clement's churchwarden, is a wealthy, abrasive man who also serves as the local magistrate and is widely disliked in the village. At dinner one evening, Clement offhandedly remarks that anyone who killed Protheroe would be doing the world a favour. One day Clement encounters Protheroe's young wife, Anne, embracing Lawrence Redding, a young visiting artist. While promising them that he will not reveal their affair, he advises Redding to leave the village at once. The next day Clement is scheduled to meet Protheroe to go over irregularities in the church accounts. Clement is called away to a farm to visit a dying parishioner but learns that the man has recovered and that nobody at the farm had asked for him. Upon returning home Clement encounters a distressed Redding at the gate to the vicarage, then discovers Colonel Protheroe dead.