Mrs Totman

In the novel A Murder is Announced, Mrs Totman is the wife of Mr Totman, the village stationer in Chipping Cleghorn. At the end of the novel, after Totman tells his wife the surprising fact that Edmund Swettenham and Phillipa Haymes did not want to subscribe ti Chipping Cleghorn Gazette she retorts that he must have heard wrongly. Everybody in the village takes the gazette. "How else would they know what's going on round here?"

In the BBC 1985 adaptation of the novel this last line which which provides a witty finish to the episode (as it did in the novel) is given to Miss Marple.