At noon, Miss Jane Marple used to open her second newspaper. Every morning, two newspapers were delivered to her home. Miss Marple read the first one in the morning while drinking her first tea, that is, if it had been delivered on time. The boy who delivered the newspapers was remarkably unreliable with time management. Often, a new boy would come, or someone acting as a temporary replacement for the first. And each had their own ideas about the route they should take during delivery. Perhaps this was how they broke the monotony. Customers who were used to reading their newspaper early, in order to catch the juiciest bits of the day's news before rushing to the bus, the train, or any other means of transport to get to work, were annoyed when the newspaper was late.
On the other hand, middle-aged and elderly ladies who lived peacefully in St. Mary Mead often preferred to read their newspaper leaning on the breakfast table. Today, Miss Marple had skimmed through the front page and a few other sections of the daily newspaper, which she ironically called a "mixed salad," due to the fact that her newspaper, the Daily Newsgiver, now contained, because of a change in ownership and much to her and her friends' annoyance, articles about men's suits, women's dresses, ladies' love problems, children's contests, and letters of complaint from female readers, and had successfully managed to remove any real news from any part of the newspaper except the front page or some obscure corner that was impossible to find.