Jane Marple Ambles About The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse

Summary: Jane Marple ambles about The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse for Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Agatha Christie Limited in the United Kingdom.

"God talks to human beings through many vectors: through each other, through organized religion, through the great books of those religions, through wise people, through art and music and literature and poetry, but nowhere with such detail and grace and color and joy as through creation. When we destroy a species, when we destroy a special place, we're diminishing our capacity to sense the divine, understand who God is and what our own potential is." Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., April 19, 2023, Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts.

“And there’s many people out there who want us to move to the next planet already and I’m like, hang on, let’s not give up on this planet yet," William, Prince of Wales, July 31, 2023, Sorted Food food truck, London, England, United Kingdom.

Fishbourne Halt branch train station accounts for the first of one fictitious railway and for the second of four railways acknowledged in The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse. The fictitious St. Mary Mead train to London perhaps allowed Jane Marple her two days in the English capital. The actual London train to Chichester allows Ernest Kemp his Fishbourne curateship even as it allows Jane Marple her three weeks in the West Sussex village. The actual Fishbourne train to Portsmouth previously allowed Mr. Cooper his daily afternoons in the Hampshire port city and unitary authority; Saturday, Sep. 15, 2007, 00:00, image of train about to depart from Fishbourne railway station for Chichester: Bashereyre at English Wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Jane Marple ambles about The Mystery of the Acid Soil, short story by Kate Mosse for Marple: Twelve New Mysteries copyrighted by Agatha Christie Limited in New York and the United Kingdom.

Agatha Christie Limited bears us the book Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, for its Marple Collection, beneath the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Sep. 13, 2022. The Mosse short-story contribution claims the 11th, next-to-last chapter, which she clusters into 10 configurations 299-300, 301-306, 306-313, 313-317, 317-320, 320-321, 321-323, 323-325, 326-327 and 327-333. The first division delivers us, in a Southern Railway services train carriage in London, England, Jane Marple, delighted about domiciling three August weeks in West Sussex.

Jane experiences, from her room in a Bertram’s Hotel “sister establishment” (Mosse:300), two days in London at such entertainments as London Zoo, Simpson’s(-in-the-Strand?) and Vaudeville Theatre.

Their first-class compartment favors Jane and Fishbourne curate Ernest Kemp with such London-area features as Battersea tenements, Clapham and Streatham “leafy suburbs” (Mosse:301) before South Downs.

Time-passing garrulousness generates going over such glimpsed grounds as the Fishbourne Halt branch train station, before which and at which Ernest and Jane respectively get off. That train ride has Jane reminiscing about her uncle as Chichester Cathedral canon and West Sussex hostess Emmeline Strickert boarding-school co-housed “so many years ago” (Mosse:302). Jane and Emmy inhabited a pensionnat (boarding school, from French pension, “boarding house” and -at, “-acting, -characterized, -derived, -having, -resembling”) under Fraulein Schweich in Florence, Italy.

Ernest Kemp journeys to the Chichester stop even as Jane Marple journeys just a bit further in The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse.

The Fishbourne rectory kindles a shorter walk from the Chichester station than from the Fishbourne Halt branch station, from both of which Jane knows her way.

Emmeline lives in Drovers “flint-faced cottage with trailing roses around the door, a white gate and a path lined with lavender” (Mosse:306) down from the Marshes. Memories manifesting from Florence pensionnat years always muster memories of American sisters monikered Carrie Louise and Ruth, the former meeting Jane subsequently at Covent Garden opera. Emmeline notes wartime necessitating Ernest Kemp as Royal Sussex Regiment fighter at the Battle of Arnhem (Netherlands, Sep. 17-26, 1944) before Divinity-School first-posting as Fishbourne-parish curate.

Emmeline observes to Jane Marple in The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse that Ernest orients ever more emotionally to “serious-minded” (Mosse:310) Elizabeth Cooper.

The Fishbourne area perhaps predisposes acting-company predilections among their church-choir singers what with repertory-company shows in such south-coast places as Bognor, Gosport, Portsmouth, Regis and Worthing.

Bull’s Head Public House, Drovers cottage, the Grove Park rectory and the Salthill Road residences qualify as quintessential Fishbourne for Emmeline, Jane, Mrs. Hands and Williams. Her reunion with Emmeline renders Jane reminiscent about referring to Scotland Yard and about Scotland Yard relying upon her regarding reconstructing what, when, where, who, why. Ernest and Jane respectively selected Vaudeville Theatre for stylish staging and Waterloo-area theater for sweetheart searches before the two sojourners shared a Victoria Station train compartment.

The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse travels Jane Marple physically from London-area Thames southward, mentally from Fishbourne northward to Greater London’s Keston village.

Perhaps no one in The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse anticipates an afternoon cancellation of the Fishbourne-Portsmouth train; woodcut of "Railway Extension at Portsmouth -- The New Harbour Station" by British painter William Edward Atkins (ca. 1842-1910) for Saturday, Dec. 16, 1876, issue of The Graphic, An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Fishbourne Halt branch train station accounts for the first of one fictitious railway and for the second of four railways acknowledged in The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse. The fictitious St. Mary Mead train to London perhaps allowed Jane Marple her two days in the English capital. The actual London train to Chichester allows Ernest Kemp his Fishbourne curateship even as it allows Jane Marple her three weeks in the West Sussex village. The actual Fishbourne train to Portsmouth previously allowed Mr. Cooper his daily afternoons in the Hampshire port city and unitary authority; Saturday, Sep. 15, 2007, 00:00, image of train about to depart from Fishbourne railway station for Chichester: Bashereyre at English Wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fishbourne_railway_station_28.jpg

Perhaps no one in The Mystery of the Acid Soil by Kate Mosse anticipates an afternoon cancellation of the Fishbourne-Portsmouth train; woodcut of "Railway Extension at Portsmouth -- The New Harbour Station" by British painter William Edward Atkins (ca. 1842-1910) for Saturday, Dec. 16, 1876, issue of The Graphic, An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Railway_extension_at_Portsmouth,_the_new_Harbour_Station_-_The_Graphic_1876.jpg

For further information:

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Marriner, Derdriu. 8 March 2024. "The Mystery of the Acid Soil Avails Us of Jane Marple by Kate Mosse." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-mystery-of-acid-soil-avails-us-of.html

Mosse, Kate. 2022. "The Mystery of the Acid Soil." Pages 299-333. In: Agatha Christie. Marple: Twelve Mysteries. New York NY: William Morrow Imprint, HarperCollins Publishers.

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Available @ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ji-Kongshu/publication/280713109_Karyotype_analysis_on_11_species_of_the_genus_Clematis/links/5d9df87e299bf13f40d0c881/Karyotype-analysis-on-11-species-of-the-genus-Clematis.pdf

Sheng, Lu; Kongshu Ji; and Liangliang Yu. 24 September 2014. "Karyotype analysis on 11 species of the genus Clematis." Brazilian Journal of Botany 37(2). Springer. Received 11 March 2014. Accepted 1 September 2014. Published online 24 September 2014. Copyrighted 2014 Botanical Society of Sao Paulo. DOI 10.1007/s40415-014-0099-5
Available @ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ji-Kongshu/publication/280713109_Karyotype_analysis_on_11_species_of_the_genus_Clematis/links/5d9df87e299bf13f40d0c881/Karyotype-analysis-on-11-species-of-the-genus-Clematis.pdf

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