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''A Caribbean Mystery'' is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 16 November 1964〔Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. ''Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions''. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (p. 15)〕 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year.〔John Cooper and B.A. Pyke. ''Detective Fiction – the collector's guide'': Second Edition (pp. 82, 87) Scholar Press. 1994. ISBN 0-85967-991-8〕〔(American Tribute to Agatha Christie )〕 The UK edition retailed at sixteen shillings (16/-)〔 and the US edition at $4.50.〔 It features the detective Miss Marple. A major character, Jason Rafiel, appears posthumously in the novel ''Nemesis'', published in 1971 and the last novel to be written featuring Miss Marple. ==Plot summary== This story takes place in the Caribbean, where Miss Marple is on holiday; her nephew paid for her to take the trip after she suffered a bout of ill health. The story starts quite slowly, and involves lots of sitting around gossiping. Miss Marple is bored and longs for something exciting to happen. She finds Major Palgrave was the man with a million stories, and everyone on holiday at the lovely Golden Palm Hotel on the Caribbean island of St. Honoré tried to avoid his long-winded stories. He approaches the elderly detective, who sits, half listening and making polite replies once in a while, until Major Palgrave starts speaking about her favourite topic: murder. He begins to tell her a rather unusual story about a man who got away with murder more than once, and when Palgrave asks her if she wanted to see a picture of a murderer, the knitting stops and she listens intently. But after he fishes through his wallet for the photo, he suddenly stops and changes the subject abruptly and rather loudly. Miss Marple looks up to see why and sees several people nearby. The next day, when one of the maids, Victoria, finds Major Palgrave dead in his room, apparently from natural causes, Miss Marple becomes convinced Palgrave was murdered, but needs to see the photograph he was about to show her before something over her shoulder caused him to stop. Miss Marple asks Dr Graham to find it, pretending it is of her nephew. Meanwhile, she interviews the others, including Tim and Molly Kendall, owners of the hotel; the Prescotts, a clergy couple; Mr Jason Rafiel, a tycoon suffering from a weak heart and now confined to a wheelchair; Jackson, Rafiel's nurse/masseur/ attendant/valet; Esther Walters, Mr Rafiel's secretary; the vivacious American Lucky Dyson and her caring husband, Greg; and Edward and Evelyn Hillingdon. On the beach when Mr Rafiel is going for a swim, Miss Marple sees Señora de Caspearo, a woman on holiday who says she remembers Major Palgrave because he had an evil eye. Miss Marple corrects her that he actually has a glass eye, but she still says that it was evil. Victoria informs the Kendalls she did not remember seeing the high blood pressure medication, Serenite, found on Major Palgrave's table after his death when she was tidying up in the afternoon. That night, Victoria is found stabbed to death. Molly begins having nightmares, and Miss Marple investigates. She finds Jackson in the house looking at Molly's cosmetics, who says that if belladonna were added to it, then it would cause nightmares. The next night, Tim finds Molly unconscious on the floor, apparently having taken an overdose of sleeping pills. The police are involved, and a cook, Enrico, tells them that he saw Molly holding a steak knife before going outside. Miss Marple asks the others if Major Palgrave told people about the photo. Others claim Palgrave said it was not a photo of a wife killer but rather a husband killer, leaving the elderly sleuth confused. Major Palgrave is exhumed and the autopsy reveals that he was poisoned. At night, Tim wakes up the hotel; his wife, Molly, is missing. They find what seems to be her body, in a creek. Miss Marple arrives and realizes that it is not Molly, but Lucky; the two women resemble one another. Miss Marple wakes Mr Rafiel in the middle of the night to tell him they must prevent another death. They go to Tim and Molly Kendall's house and find Tim asking Molly to drink some wine to soothe her. Miss Marple tells Jackson to take the wine away from Tim. She shows it to Mr Rafiel, saying there is a deadly narcotic in it. She explains that Tim Kendall is the wife killer, recognised by Major Palgrave. Miss Marple had thought Palgrave saw someone on the right, where the Hillingdons and the Dysons were coming up the beach, but later she remembered that he had a glass eye so could not see on his right, but only on his left, where Tim and Molly were sitting. Tim was planning to kill his wife, but Major Palgrave recognised him and so had to be eliminated as well as Victoria, who remembered the Serenite. Tim put belladonna in Molly's cosmetics to drive her mad and lead her to commit suicide. Tim asked his wife to meet him by the creek. Molly, on her way to the meeting, had a scary vision from the belladonna and wandered off. Tim saw Lucky waiting there and mistook her for Molly and killed her. He was about to poison Molly when Miss Marple came in. Esther Walters suddenly falls to Tim's knees and insists that Tim isn't a killer. Tim shouts at her to keep quiet, asking whether she wants to get him hanged. Tim had been planning to marry Esther, after Molly's death, because he had heard that she was going to inherit a large sum of money from her employer, Jason Rafiel. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「A Caribbean Mystery」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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