My little finger said to me

My little finger told me ( By the Pricking off My Thumbs in the anglophone original editions) is a detective novel of Agatha Christie, published in 1968, putting in scene the Beresford husbands (Thomas Beresford says Tommy and Prudence Cowley known as Tuppence), arrived at the retirement age. It is the fourth and penultimate shutter of the series putting them in scene.

Contrary to the title of the film adaptation - My little finger told me… - which in of be drawn in 2005, the title of this novel does not comprise points of suspension in the French editions.

The intrigue of the novel

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, come to return visit in its old people's home to their old aunt Ada, learn there the recent one and mysterious disappearance from certain Mrs Lancaster. Tuppence, which had on the occasion to exchange some words with this old woman obviously taken of a morbid obsession, is at the head put to find it, fearing that it could arrive to him misfortune because it was holder of a heavy secrecy… In the room of Mrs Lanscaster, she discovers a table representing a house. Benefitting from the absence of Tommy, it goes by train towards the house.

Comment on the title

The anglophone title is directly drawn from worms of scene 1 of act 4 of the Macbeth of William Shakespeare:

By the pricking off my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!

The tingling in a finger was seen, among other physical symptoms, like a warning of the existence of the evil.

Comment

This novel is one of three works, with the pale Horse (1961) and the Last Enigma (published in 1976, but written with beginning of the year 40), in which the novelist utilizes in the intrigue a scene showing an old woman with the Grey hair, drinking milk glass, which questions a visitor to know if it is “(its) poor child who is buried behind the chimney”. Two experts of the world “christien” put forth the assumption that the novelist could be strongly marked, during its childhood, by the vicinity of a lunatic asylum in the vicinity immediate of Ashfield, the field which the novelist and her parents occupied with Torquay and which, perhaps, it could at that time have met an old woman corresponding to the portrait that it made some with three recoveries.

Editions

By the Pricking off My Thumbs , Hakes, coll “Crime Club”, London, 1968
By the Pricking off My Thumbs , Dodd Mead, New York, 1968
My little finger told me , Librairie of the Fields-Élysées, coll “the Mask”, n° 1115, Paris, 1970
My little finger told me , in the Integrals - Agatha Christie: Volume 12: Years 1965-1970 , Bookstore of the Fields-Élysées, Paris, 1999. ISBN 2-7024-2497-X

The remainder of the series

Agatha Christie put in scene its two heroes, in four other novels:

Mr. Brown ( Secret The Adversary ) (1922), another tinted novel of espionage
the crime is our business ( Partners in Crime ) (1929), whose form is connected more with that of a collection of news no matter what there exists a discussion thread in the successive intrigues;
NR or M ( NR gold M? ) (1941);
My little finger told me ( By the Pricking off my Thumb ) (1968);
the Rocking horse ( Postern off Fate ) (1973).

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