Allison Beeman was cast as Agatha Christie’s septuagenarian mystery-solver Miss Jane Marple, in A Murder is Announced, at the ripe old age of twenty-two. Something about Allison’s wispy blonde hair, pale skin, and fragile bone structure spoke, “Seventy year old,” to the director of the Center for Performing Arts. (It could also have been that there were only ten auditioners for eight roles.) But, whatever the reason Allison was cast, she determined she would be the best damn Miss Jane Marple to ever grace the stage.
She had read and misunderstood Stanislavski’s works on method acting like hundreds of other actors the world over, so she determined to delve into the depths of Marple. She began with the makeup, carefully scrunching her face to force wrinkles to appear. Wrinkles are sharp cutting things. Allison carved them into her face with a fine brush. She dyed her hair gray — and not with the fake spray-on stuff found in Halloween party stores. Oh no, she asked her mother to take her to the salon. The stylist looked at her as if she’d lost her mind but, in the end, it wasn’t so different from her natural light blonde. When she looked in the mirror, she said to her mother, “I’m old.”
“Not just yet,” her mother said.
At that moment Allison realized it was not enough. Makeup and hair dye were not delving the depths. She was not embracing the magical “What if?”
So she read up on aging. She learned that women sometimes grow shorter as they age, because they lose bone density. Allison began hunching, holding herself more stiffly — because joints, they begin to ache. At Goodwill, she bought herself a gnarled cane and wouldn’t go anywhere without it. Supportive shoes replaced her strappy sandals. (She found the shoes almost unbearably comfortable.) Flowered dresses replaced tight jeans. She wore actual stockings that bunched around her ankles as the day dragged on. With her exterior prepared, she wandered around her neighborhood, like Miss Marple, and spied.
Up and down the streets she wandered, hunched over her cane. The neighborhood kids, hurling basketballs at lopsided driveway hoops grew familiar with the sight of her. Several of them rolled their eyes but otherwise didn’t pay her much mind.
Very quickly she came to realize there was not a single interesting murder to solve in her neighborhood. She poked her head through the juniper hedgerow surrounding one house but all she saw was dry, crackled grass. The curtains were shut. Allison/Jane Marple tsked and headed farther up the street. The abandoned house at the corner was no better — perhaps was even worse because once upon a time an older woman had lived there with her dogs. There’s been barking for years and now it was silent. The old woman had wasted away; her dogs were sent to a local rescue group. Allison continued on past the abandoned house, thinking about the woman and wasting.
The director praised her dedication, told her he’d never seen anything like it. “It’s as if you’ve aged decades. What a miracle,” he told her. “No one would believe you’re only twenty-two.”
One day, during her ‘constitutional,’ she realized something was wrong as she climbed a shallow hill. Her breath came, but shortly. Her back ached. Her hand, clutched around the head of the cane, tingled as if the fingers had fallen asleep and were desperately trying to wake up. This is ridiculous, she thought to herself. Irritated, she shook her hand, trying to bring it back to life. For a moment, she broke character and stood straight, arching her back and stretching her core muscles. The moment of relief didn’t last. Something in the center of her spine cricked. Pain, sharp and hot, shot out like lightning from her back around to her ribcage.
“Ow!” she said. No one was around to hear her though. Allison suddenly felt ridiculous — dressed as an old woman, hunched over with back pain, unable to catch her breath.
Hesitantly, she turned toward her home. The pain in her joints was growing. She could not remember the last time she’d felt so tired. It took an hour to get back to her front stoop. She went inside and headed toward the bathroom. Sweat beaded on her forehead and on her upper lip. Why was she so hot? She ran cool water. Splashed some on her face. It felt wonderful. She sipped some water from the faucet. Then she looked in the mirror.
The make-up had not come off with the water. Allison squinted, bring her face so close to the glass that her nose almost touched it. She brushed her aching fingers against her almost translucent skin. Fine blue veins traced wrinkles that did not disappear. Her skin felt fragile, dry. She looked older than seventy. Maybe ninety. Or one hundred. Allison scratched at a deep crow’s line by her eye — she’d drawn that line this morning. The delicate skin gave way; a drop of blood swelled up. The line remained.
Allison still couldn’t breathe. Something fluttered deep in her chest, like a bird trying to get out from under her ribcage. It choked her. She stumbled back from the mirror. Her ankles screamed in protest at moving so quickly. The back of her knee caught on the bathtub, knocking her weight backward. Allison landed hard in the tub. She felt her hip crack in half but she didn’t have the breath to scream. Her cane landed across the room but she didn’t have the strength to reach out and grab it. She couldn’t pull herself up and she didn’t want to. The pain radiating out from her hip was too much to bear. Her leg went numb.
Her mother arrived home after work to find the house empty. She called Allison’s name and got no answer. This didn’t bother Mrs. Beeman. Allison was probably at rehearsal. Mrs. Beeman went to the bathroom. Allison left her cane behind. It’ll be a rough rehearsal for her, Mrs. Beeman thought with a sigh.
As she peed, she saw dust on the bottom of the bathtub — a fine gray film. She sighed, probably some kind of make-up from Allison. She finished, flushed, and then ran water to clear out the tub.
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