Mrs Rhodes

In the short story Miss Marple Tells a Story, Mrs Rhodes and her husband stayed at the Crown Hotel in Barnchester. Mrs Rhodes was later found stabbed to death, in her hotel room, in circumstances where only a chambermaid who entered her room, and her husband, in an adjoining room, had opportunity.

According to her husband, Mrs Rhodes had received threatening letters couched in "crazy language". However, she was a kind of romantic liar who tended to exaggerate her experiences: a slip on a banana peel would become a story about a narrow escape from death. Thus her husband tended to discount her stories. When she read out the letters, he thought she had written them herself--she had done this before. She was a woman of hysterical tendencies who craved ceaselessly for excitement. In addition, she was also somewhat of a hypochondriac.