About this production
The Murder at the Vicarage is the book that gave Miss Marple a novel. She had turned up in magazine short stories before 1930, but this is her first full-length case, and Christie built it on a joke: the amateur detective is not the narrator. The story is told by Leonard Clement, vicar of St. Mary Mead, who opens Chapter 1 (10m 42s) at lunch, complaining that anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world a service, while his much younger wife Griselda teases him and Mary the maid bangs the dishes down. Four chapters later, in Chapter 5 (12m 01s), the vicar walks into his own study and finds the Colonel shot dead at his desk, with a note beside him timed 6:20 and a clock on the mantelpiece that has always run fast. Within eight chapters two different people have confessed to the killing, and both confessions collapse. The rest of the book is the village, in rooms, being questioned.
That structure is why this book was our first Miss Marple production and why it plays on the front page of midsummerr.com: the first sample on our homepage is a scene from it. A first-person mystery narrated by a clergyman gives a single reader nothing to hide behind. Clement is wry and fair-minded and constantly being talked at, and a solo narration has to become Griselda, Inspector Slack, Colonel Melchett, Dr. Haydock, Lawrence Redding, Anne and Lettice Protheroe and the whole gallery of church ladies through one man's throat. Our cast carries 46 speaking parts. The vicar's voice is the narrator's voice, which is how a first-person novel should sound, and everyone else is someone else: the brusque Inspector Slack, the bluff and philosophical Dr. Haydock, the nervy High Church curate Hawes, a cool and self-possessed Mrs. Lestrange, and the four women who run the village's intelligence service, Miss Marple, Miss Wetherby, Miss Hartnell and Mrs. Price Ridley, who are cast so that a listener can tell a prim flutter from a booming do-gooder from a sharp moralist without a single "she said." Our guide to what an AI narrator tells listeners uses one of this production's interview scenes as its example, and does your book need a full cast? makes the same point about attribution with the same book.
The depth of the cast is the thing to listen for. Christie's village runs on servants and tradespeople who each get a page and a piece of the timeline, and in this production each of them gets a voice: Reeves the butler at Old Hall, Manning the nervous chauffeur, Rose the parlourmaid and Gladdie the kitchen maid who overheard something she should not have, Mrs. Price Ridley's maid Clara and her sneeze, the old woman who dusts Lawrence Redding's cottage and ruins the fingerprints, Mr. Cherubim the chemist, the coroner at the inquest, the fish delivery boy who fixes the time of the shot, and a telephone exchange operator who apologises, without much interest, after a line goes dead. In the mix the telephone matters. A fake summons, a menacing anonymous call to Mrs. Price Ridley in Chapter 13 (12m 04s), the traced calls in Chapter 17 (13m 26s), and the hysterical late-night call that cuts Chapter 27 (6m 00s) short: this is a book solved partly down a wire, and a full-cast production can make the voice on the other end sound like it is somewhere else.
The set pieces are quieter than a chase, and harder to score. Chapter 5 is a man alone in a study with a body and the sound of his own house. Chapter 9 (10m 57s) is Miss Marple, from her garden, calmly telling the Chief Constable exactly who walked past her gate and when. Chapter 12 (21m 13s) has Anne Protheroe re-enacting her approach to the study window and failing to see what she should have seen. Chapter 18 (14m 50s) is the inquest at the Blue Boar, a room full of witnesses and timings. Chapter 26 (22m 21s) opens with the vicar preaching an uncharacteristically fiery sermon to a packed church and ends, late that night, with Miss Marple explaining her method over the study fire. Then the book accelerates: Chapter 28 (3m 32s) is the shortest in the production, a hurried visit to a curate's lodgings, and Chapter 30 (18m 02s) is the one where Miss Marple takes the case apart and names the answer. We will not, and neither will anything in this post. For how a reveal scene like that is directed and mixed, see the mystery and detective production guide.
This is the seventh Agatha Christie title in our free catalogue; the full list of free Christie productions has the others, including The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the Poirot novel that is this book's natural companion: both are narrated by a village professional who watches the detective work from beside it. For the same year at the other end of the shelf, Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison was also published in 1930, a courtroom novel where this is a village one.
The production runs 7h 17m and contains all 32 chapters of the novel, unabridged and in order, from the dumplings at lunch to the last conversation on the vicarage lawn. It is free to listen to.
The 1930 text is in the public domain in the United States. Agatha Christie died in 1976, so the book is still under copyright in the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area. This title is available to listen everywhere except those territories.
By the numbers
- Format: Full-cast dramatized audiobook
- Chapters: 32 (all 32 chapters of the novel)
- Runtime: 7h 17m
- Cast: 46 speaking parts, narrated in character by the vicar
- Production: AI character voices, original music, and sound effects
- Price: Free to listen
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Start your first chapter free →FAQ
Is this audiobook AI-narrated?
Yes. Every voice in The Murder at the Vicarage is AI-generated and produced by Midsummerr, with an original score and sound design. AI narration is disclosed as such on retail platforms that require it.
How long is the audiobook?
About 7h 17m across 32 chapters.
Who narrates it?
The novel is written in the first person by Leonard Clement, the vicar of St. Mary Mead, so the narrator in this production is the vicar's own voice, and his lines in dialogue are the same voice. Every other character, Miss Marple included, is a separate cast voice.
Is this the first Miss Marple book?
It is her first novel. Miss Marple had appeared in magazine short stories before 1930, but The Murder at the Vicarage, published that year, is the first full-length case and the first visit to St. Mary Mead.
Why can't I listen in the UK or the EU?
The 1930 text entered the US public domain on 1 January 2026, but copyright in the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area runs for seventy years after the author's death, and Agatha Christie died in 1976. The production is available everywhere else.
Where can I listen?
Listen free at midsummerr.com/listen/murder-at-the-vicarage-agatha-christie.
