In this story Agatha Christie is stepping in Conan Doyle's footsteps with a mystery that revolves around some colonial strife, or rivalry and vengeance. But at the same time she keeps her naiveté and her nursery simplicity with a whole murder case based on a nursery rhyme, a common and popular nursery rhyme: the repetitiveness becomes the key to the series of murders. And yet there is something ugly in the fact that the criminal looks for the simplest mind in the lot to use that simple mind to his own ends. And this time it is both poignant and disquieting: he uses an orphan who has found some peace of mind and some stability as a maid in a wealthy home. "Sing a Song of Sixpence, A bag full of Rye, Four and twenty Blackbirds, Bak'd in a Pye." We can't avoid thinking of the ten little n*****s, killed one by one and one after the other. Then Miss Marple is just some kind of inner voice that tells us how true and vicious life can be: from vice to evil there is only one little step.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID