the altered cheque at the Midnaham Wells Hotel

The altered cheque at the Midnaham Wells Hotel is a seven-pound cheque changed to seventeen, which Jane Marple presents to the investigators as evidence of Rudi Scherz’s petty fraud. Its importance extends beyond the amount: Marple recognizes in the alteration a familiar, practiced kind of dishonesty, then uses the contrast between such small thefts and the supposed armed hold-up to challenge the explanation of Rudi’s death. The cheque makes an apparently modest financial irregularity carry substantial weight in the investigation.

Discovery and examination

Marple produces the cheque from her bag after saying that Rudi had altered one. It has come back from her bank with her other cheques. She identifies the original sum as seven pounds and the changed amount as seventeen: a stroke has been added before the 7, and “teen” after the word seven, with a blot that partly obscures the alteration. She observes that the ink is the same as the ink she used when writing the cheque at the desk.

The document is significant because it is not merely a suspicious payment remembered after the fact. Marple has the returned cheque in hand, and its visible alterations allow her to demonstrate the method she is describing. She regards the work as practiced, suggesting that this is not necessarily an isolated lapse. Her conclusion is that Rudi had probably altered cheques before, though the evidence she shows directly establishes this particular alteration.

Marple’s recognition of a pattern

Marple explains why the attempt was poorly matched to her habits. Someone who writes cheques for varied amounts and does not carefully check a passbook might overlook the change. She, by contrast, watches her small expenditures closely. Seventeen pounds is not a sum she writes: she writes twenty pounds for monthly wages and books, while she usually cashes a cheque for seven pounds for personal spending. She notes that this amount used to be five pounds, before prices rose.

The cheque also recalls a fishmonger, Fred Tyler, who used to add an extra one in the shillings column of bills. Marple says that the small overcharges accumulated because many customers did not add up their accounts. In her comparison, petty fraud depends on ordinary inattention and on keeping each individual sum small. The recollection helps explain how she interprets Rudi’s apparently polished manner: she associates a direct, unblinking gaze with a practiced, evasive character, rather than treating respectable presentation as proof of honesty.

Evidence against the hold-up story

The investigators’ account presents Rudi as the young man who staged the hold-up and shot himself. Marple argues that this alleged act does not follow from the kind of misconduct the cheque reveals. In her view, someone who steals small amounts, alters a cheque, or takes money or an unattended piece of jewellery may be trying to maintain a smart appearance and afford outings with a girlfriend; that pattern does not make him the sort of person who would suddenly take a revolver, hold up a roomful of people, and shoot at someone.

Her conclusion is not that the cheque proves who committed the shooting. Rather, it exposes a mismatch between Rudi’s known or suspected habits and the dramatic crime attributed to him. Other people have also felt that the explanation does not make sense, and Marple’s concrete evidence gives that doubt a specific basis. The cheque thus supports her view that Rudi is not a convincing perpetrator of the hold-up, even as it confirms his capacity for lesser dishonesty.

Significance in the investigation

The cheque’s force comes from the difference between its small scale and the violent crime it is used to explain. Its altered figures point toward routine, opportunistic theft; the alleged hold-up demands a sudden and much more extreme action. By laying out the document and explaining why its alteration would fail against her careful habits, Marple transforms a financial record into an argument about character and plausibility.

The episode also shows how close attention to everyday practices can expose a weak criminal theory. Marple does not rely on a general suspicion of Rudi: she connects the amount, the added marks, the ink, her customary cheque sums, and a remembered instance of petty overcharging. The cheque is therefore both physical evidence of a specific deception and a means of distinguishing that deception from the larger crime for which Rudi has been made responsible.