Miss Marple at an Italian finishing school with Americans Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline "Carrie" Louise Serrocold. While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is mentioned in "At Bertram's Hotel", where it is said she visited the hotel when she was fourteen and almost sixty years have passed since then. Excluding "Sleeping Murder", 41 years passed between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's nephew: in "The Murder at the Vicarage", the Reverend Clement's nephew Dennis is a teenager; in "The Mirror Crack'd
Miss Marple from Side to Side", it is mentioned that the nephew is now grown and successful and has a career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a holiday after illness in "A Caribbean Mystery". Little is known about Marple's background, except that she has two younger sisters. One of them is the mother of Raymond, and the other is mother to Mabel Denham, a young woman who was accused of poisoning her husband Geoffrey ("The Thumb Mark of St. Peter"). Miss Marple also appears in "Greenshaw's Folly", a short story traditionally included as part of