4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie

This is one of the Christie books I love less, because there is virtually noone known. There is Miss Marple, but due to her age, she simply sits at home, letting other people do everything, she has very little role, although a very important one. I prefer stories with Poirot in an active role, those are my favourites.
Here, we have Miss Marple's friend, Ms McGillicuddy, coming to see her, and while on the train she sees a man strangling a woman on the train next to hers. She's sure of what whe saw, although nobody believes her, thinking she's just an old woman imagining things, probably by falling asleep after reading a crime story on the paper. Nobody but Miss Marple, of course, because she knows her friend, and knows she has no imagination at all, so she totally believes her. Since no dead woman is found, Miss Marple decides to hire a girl to go working where she is convinced is the most likely place to hide the body, and lets her do the searching. When the body of a strangled woman is really found, the police starts questioning everybody in the house. Rutherford Hall is where the old Mr Crackenthorpe lives with his daughter Emma. There are also now her brothers: Cedric the painter, Harold the businessman, Alfred the... con man; there's the local doctor Quimper who appears to be in love with Emma; her brother-in-law Brian Eastley with his son Alexander and his son's friend James Stoddard-West.
They seem to be all in need of money, but the problem is, the victim is a girl not related to the family. Had been murdered the old man, there would be lots of suspects, of course, but they don't even know who that girl is.

SPOILERS- you have been warned, don't go on if you haven't yet read it.
At first I was completely at loss, no idea whatsoever, but when Alfred was killed, and then Harold was killed... well, a certain plan started to present itself. But I didn't really see it because I didn't want to, I had my heart on a happy ending, with Emma married to the good country doctor, and didn't want to see the truth. It was actually the only reasonable explanation. It had no sense that someone should kill the unknown wife of their late brother, it also made no sense that one of them should kill the other brothers but not the old man. It wasn't strange at all that the doctor wanted to be free to marry soon-to-be-very-rich Emma, and her brothers dead meant much more money for her, and we heard about a disappeared girl married to an English man... I didn't see it, until the end, but I suppose it's not impossible.

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