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 the Poirot collection "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" (1960). Four stories in the "Three Blind Mice" collection (1950) feature Miss Marple: "Strange Jest", "Tape-Measure Murder", "The Case of the Caretaker", and "The Case of the Perfect Maid". The Autograph edition of "Miss Marple's Final Cases" includes the eight in the original plus "Greenshaw's Folly". Although popular from her first appearance in 1930, Jane Marple had to wait thirty-two years for her first big-screen appearance, starring Margaret Rutherford. These were popular and successful light comedies, but were disappointing to Christie herself. Nevertheless, Agatha Christie dedicated the novel "The Mirror Crack'd