At Bertram’s Hotel (1965) – Agatha Christie | First Edition Identification Guide

Miss Marple is taking a two-week vacation in London, at Bertram’s Hotel, courtesy of her nephew Raymond West. In her youth, she had stayed at this hotel. 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. Miss Marple encounters a friend taking tea, Lady Selina Hazy. Selina is on the lookout for friends, yet often mistakes people who look like her old friends. Miss Marple sees the famous adventuress Bess Sedgwick, plus her daughter, the young and beautiful Elvira Blake with her legal guardian Colonel Luscombe. She also meets the forgetful clergyman, Canon Pennyfather. American tourists consider the hotel as really English. She sees race driver Ladislaus Malinowski stop at the desk, and several times notices his car. She sees him with Elvira Blake.
Elvira will inherit money from her father when she turns 21. Her mother is alive, but estranged by choice from Elvira. Elvira seeks to learn the size of her inheritance and who gets it if she dies. Lawyer Richard Egerton, one of her trustees, tells her about the great wealth awaiting her. She works a scheme with her friend Bridget to gain money to fly to Ireland to find some unspecified information, and goes there. It is unclear if she returns by train or by air.
On the same day that Elvira travels to Ireland, Canon Pennyfather is to attend a conference in Lucerne. He fails to go to the airport the day before, going on the day of the conference instead, with a now useless airline ticket. He returns to Bertram’s around midnight, disturbing intruders in his bedroom. He awakens four days later in a house far from London, and near the location of a recent overnight robbery of the Irish Mail train. He recuperates with a family unknown to him. His concussion blocks his memory of events. In an odd coincidence, some witnesses of the train robbery report seeing him on the train. When Archdeacon Simmons arrives and Pennyfather is still not home, he calls the police. Inspector Campbell is assigned the case, and is soon joined by Chief Inspector Davy, who sees links to unsolved crimes.
After the sergeant questions everyone at the hotel, Davy comes to ask more questions. He encounters Miss Marple; her observations of the hotel having an ambiance not just of the Edwardian era but of unreality match his. She tells him of seeing Canon Pennyfather at 3 am after she thought he had gone to Lucerne. She also tells him what she overheard while sitting in a public part of the hotel. Bess Sedgwick spoke with the hotel commissionaire Michael Gorman about their mutual past in loud voices. They had once been married in Ireland, which her family ended by parting them. She thought the wedding was not a legal marriage. But it was genuine, and her four further marriages were unwittingly bigamous.
On Miss Marple’s last day at the hotel, speaking with Davy, they hear two shots ring out, followed by screams outdoors. Elvira Blake is discovered next to the corpse of Gorman. Elvira says he has been shot dead while shielding her from the gunfire. The gun belongs to Malinowski.
Davy calls Miss Marple and Pennyfather back to London. She is in her room and he enacts his likely movements when she saw him in the hallway. She realises she saw a younger man, though with Pennyfather’s appearance, and recalls the German term doppelganger. This jogs Pennyfather’s memory; he remembers he saw himself sitting on a chair in his own hotel room, just before he was knocked unconscious. The criminal gang was counting on his absence, and reacted violently on his appearance.
Davy and Miss Marple confront Bess Sedgwick as the orchestrator of these daring robberies, along with the maître d’hôtel Henry, and Ladislaus Malinowski when fast cars were needed. The hotel staff co-operated, and the owners handled the money side of the thefts. Bess confesses not only to this, but also to the murder of Gorman. Making a run for it, Bess steals a car and speeds away recklessly, crashing fatally. Elvira was the second person in that public room, overhearing the conversation between her mother and Gorman. She thinks it invalidates Sedgwick’s marriage to Lord Coniston, and marks her as illegitimate and not the heiress. She wants to be wealthy so Ladislaus will marry her. However, her father’s will names her explicitly, information she never learned.
Miss Marple is not convinced Bess killed Gorman. She believes that Elvira killed him. Davy agrees and will not let her get away with the murder.