I’ve been listening this past week to an audio book of the Agatha Christie novel, The Mirror Crack’d, and there is an element of the plot which reminded me of the Anti-Vaxxer movement. (Admittedly, this is one of the reasons I decided to re-visit it). In the novel, a famous movie actress buys a manor house near the village of Mary St. Mead where amateur detective and professional spinster Miss Jane Marple lives. And so naturally, a murder occurs.
The point I found relevant is a major key to the solution of the mystery, so if you’ve never read the book, be aware that SPOILERS are coming up.
As I mentioned, the nearby manor has been purchased by a famous movie star and her producer husband, (played by Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson in the movie version several years back). The star throws an open house to which many of the more important citizens of the village are invited. One of the visitors is a fan of the star’s who loves telling the story about sneaking out of an infirmary in order to see the star and getting her autograph many years ago. But as the fangirl is busy gushing over her idol, she suddenly falls over and dies, poisoned by something in her drink.
At first no one can think who would want to kill the silly fangirl, and the police quickly decide that someone must be out to kill the celebrity and the poisoned drink wound up in the wrong hand — especially when death threats against the celebrity start showing up. But Miss Marple seizes on a peculiar clue: shortly before the death occurred, while the star and her admirer were chatting, witnesses observed a peculiar look come over the celebrity’s face; a kind of frozen, stunned expression.
The actress has certainly seen her share of tragedy in her career. Aside from the usual string of unsuccessful marriages, the children she adopted and then discarded after she became pregnant, the child who was born with severe birth defects whose fate is discretely not mentioned, and now the death threats and attempts on her life — yes, a couple more attempts occur. It is no wonder she seems constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
The key to the mystery turns out to be exactly what the fangirl told her; the story she has told so many times that practically everyone in the village has heard it, but most people have overlooked or forgotten the crucial detail.
The reason why the fan was in the infirmary and had to sneak out in order to see her idol was because she had come down with German Measles. A fairly mild disease, Miss Marple admits, but one which is particularly dangerous for pregnant women, because it can lead to birth defects in the fetus including blindness and mental disability.
For years, the actress has been brooding and obsessing over the child she had, but she had never known where she had contracted that case of German Measles which marred the child. Not until her enthusiastic fan told her — practically boasted — about infecting her.
That realization was the reason for the stunned look on her face at the reception. And the reason why when she ‘accidentally’ spilled the admirer’s drink she took the opportunity to slip an overdose of anti-depression pills from her purse into the woman’s glass of champagne.
In summing up the case to the Scotland Yard inspector in charge, Miss Marple muses ruefully about the victim. She was not a vicious woman by any means; she was extremely well-intentioned. But she was the kind of person who never gave a thought to how her actions would affect anyone other than herself.
And in reading the screeds of some of the Anti-Vaxxers, I see that mindset repeated over and over again. They are focused on their rights, but cannot comprehend that what they are doing and how they are acting will have an effect on others.
