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
Marple railway station around the hall and Cheadle inspired many settings within her books. Due to living in Devon, Christie often used the railway to travel up to what was then Cheshire, by connecting from the Midland Main Line from London St Pancras onto the Hope Valley Line, and passing through Marple. It is theorised that at some point, a train was delayed there for long enough for the station sign to stick in her mind, to resurface in 1932 at the publication of the first novel featuring the detective Jane Marple. As part of Manchester's Transport Innovation Fund bid in 2008, which