The story goes a bit haywire from then on. Then Tommy returns, and all of a sudden we are on the trail of a gang of master-criminals that appears to have been in operation for at least fifty years.
It is an enjoyable read there is a great deal of gossiping about the past along the way, much of it repeated, but there again that is surely what one might expect. Once she has set out on her own, Tuppence becomes a much less annoying character as she probes the spooky atmosphere of an out-of-the-way village, and reaches out to any inhabitants who remember a time long gone. Tommy and Tuppence are as Tommy-and-Tuppence-y as ever, with their habit of reliving their old cases again to the fore. In the play, the ‘pricking’ is the witch’s reaction to the arrival on the scene of Macbeth in the book, Tuppence feels a shudder of fear in the company of Julia Lancaster, but misunderstands the reason for it. There is an old superstition that tingling in the fingers (or other bodily reactions) presaged something bad about to happen. The title is a quote by one of the witches in Macbeth:īy the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes Intrigued, and with Tommy away, Tuppence sets out to find the house. The painting had been given to Aunt Ada by Mrs Lancaster, who is no longer staying at the home when Tommy and Tuppence collect it. The latter inexplicably asks Tuppence: ‘Was it your poor child?’ apparently referring to someone walled in behind a fireplace.Īunt Ada dies soon afterwards and amongst her effects is a painting of a house by a canal that haunts Tuppence with memories of having seen it before.
While waiting for Tommy to come out, she meets Mrs Lancaster, another inmate. Tuppence is thrown out of the irascible old lady’s room. Tommy and Tuppence visit his Aunt Ada in her nursing home. There has always been something eerie to me about broken dolls. It is a very appropriate cover for a book which features a deranged serial killer of children. The Tom Adams cover is focused on a doll found stuffed in a chimney, which proves to be a crucial part of the story.
0 kommentar(er)
