She works a scheme with her friend Bridget to gain money to fly to Ireland to find some unspecified information, and goes there. Lawyer Richard Egerton, one of her trustees, tells her about the great wealth awaiting her. Elvira seeks to learn the size of her inheritance and who gets it if she dies. Her mother is alive, but estranged by choice from Elvira. She sees him with Elvira Blake.Įlvira will inherit money from her father when she turns 21. She sees race driver Ladislaus Malinowski stop at the desk, and several times notices his car. American tourists consider the hotel as really English. She also meets the forgetful clergyman, Canon Pennyfather.

Miss Marple sees the famous adventuress Bess Sedgwick, plus her daughter, the young and beautiful Elvira Blake with her legal guardian Colonel Luscombe. Selina is on the lookout for friends, yet often mistakes people who look like her old friends. Miss Marple encounters a friend taking tea, Lady Selina Hazy. Since the war, the hotel has been renovated to create a distinct Edwardian era atmosphere with the best of modern conveniences and the best staff. In her youth, she had stayed at this hotel. Miss Marple is taking a two-week holiday in London, at Bertram's Hotel, courtesy of her nephew Raymond West. The character Elvira Blake was drawn well, and the careful description of the way older people look in 1965 compared to earlier eras, showed that Christie's 'sharp eye had not dimmed'. A review in 1990 found the plot 'creaky' but praised the 'hotel atmosphere' which 'is very well conveyed and used'. Another reviewer called it 'an ingenious mystery' reliant on Christie's skillful writing style. Reviews at the time of publication considered the denouement too far-fetched, but that it has 'phenomenal zest and makes a reasonably snug read'. She witnesses the complex lives of an estranged mother and daughter, and as always works with the police to solve crimes. Miss Marple enjoys her trips around London, and learns that she cannot go back: life moves forward. The hotel has a personality of its own, and a niche clientele of important church people, older women who lived through the Edwardian age, and girls looking for a safe place to stay in London. Miss Marple takes a two-week holiday in London, at Bertram's Hotel, where she stayed in her youth. The UK edition retailed at sixteen shillings (16/-) and the US edition at $4.50.

At Bertram's Hotel is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 15 November 1965 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year.

Bertram's hotel