By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Whilst visiting Tommy’s Aunt Ada in her nursing home, Tuppence encounters some odd residents including Mrs Lancaster who talks about ‘your poor child’ and ‘something behind the fireplace’. A familiar house in a painting left to them by Aunt Ada takes Tuppence on a dangerous adventure involving a missing tombstone, diamond smuggling and a horrible realisation of what Mrs Lancaster was talking about.

Year: 1968
Detective: Tommy & Tuppence
Location: England

Cast of characters

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Also: Albert Batt, Gertrude (Nellie) Bligh, Emily Boscowan, Mr. and Mrs. Copleigh, Mr. Eccles, Ada Fanshawe, Mrs. Lancaster, Dr. Murray, Nurse O'Keefe, Miss Packard, Sir Josiah Penn, Alice and Amos Perry, Robert (2), Ivor Smith, Sir Philip Starke, the Vicar

Publishing history

Publishing: The novel was published in 1968 by William Collins Sons & Co. in London, and by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York. A French language film of the novel was released in 2004 as 'Mon petit doigt m'a dit'.

Notes and reviews

The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act IV, Scene 1), spoken by the three witches as they await the arrival of Macbeth, now king and responsible for the deaths of two men. The novel marks the return of Tommy and Tuppence after nearly three decades of silence and, unlike the author's other recurring characters, the detectives have aged in accordance with time: thus, Tommy is now over seventy, and Tuppence is sixty-six but as sprightly as ever!

Murder methods:

One Poisoning.

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