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Witnessing a murder in a train overtaking the one she travels in but
failing to convince police inspector Craddock (Charles 'Bud' Tingwell) -
mainly due to the absence of a corpse -, Miss Marple (Margaret
Rutherford) decides to take investigations into her own hands. Searching
the surroundings of the traintracks, she & Mr Stringer (Stringer
Davis) soon find a trail that leads to Ackenthorpe Manor, & since
Miss Marple soon figures she needs someone on the inside, she takes up a
job at the manor as maid. The household consists of old Mr Ackenthorpe
(James Robertson Justice), a grumpy, greedy but immensely rich invalid,
his daughter Emma (Muriel Pavlow), his grandson Alexander (Ronnie
Raymond), & creepy gardener Hillman (Michael Golden) ... & of
course the corpse, whom Miss Marple soon finds with the help of young
Alexander, a lively lad who would do anything to ewscape boredom.
Finding of the corpse of course brings inspector Craddock back to the
case, & he soon rounds up the rest of Ackenthorpe's family as
possible suspects (Thorley Walters, Ronald Howard, Conrad Phillips,
Gerald Cross) - they were all at the manor on the day of the murder,
mainly to fight over their father's inheritance. Also, a motive is soon
dug up when it is suspected the victim was Nicole, the French widow of a
long deceased son of Ackenthorpe, who would make a claim on part of the
money. Of course, as they are all here, some more murders occur,
including food poisoning, but the murderer, of course, is someone
completely different - family doctor Quimper (Arthur Kennedy), the
secret lover of Emma, who was already married in France though, to the
first victim he only lead the others to believe was Nicole to shed
suspicion onto the Ackenthorpe household - & Miss Marple tricks him
into a confession, to be heard by inspector Craddock. In the end,
Ackenthorpe even proposes to her, but she rudely declines. First
in a series of 4 Agatha Christie-Miss
Marple adaptations (The others are Murder at the Gallop,
Murder Most Foul & Murder
Ahoy) - & quite possibly
among the best Christie adaptations ever. Though it takes great liberties
with the novel 4.50 from Paddington, it does stay true to the
spirit of the writer's work, in placing the crime in the Englich
countryside, populated by a host of eccentric characters (with
Rutherford of course being the scenestealer - in a good way) &
always carefully balancing between dead-serious & blackly funny
elements. Somehow later adaptations of Miss Marple (including a
long-running - 1984 to 1992 - series of tv-movies starring Joan Hickson,
who has a minor role in this one) never quite managed to get this
mixture even remotely right. Agatha Christie by the way was very
pleased by this treatment of her novel & even dedicated another book
about Miss Marple (Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side) to Margaret
Rutherford - which was never filmed with Rutherford though, but with
Angela Lansbury in the lead. The character of Mister Stringer on the other hand was
completely made up especially for the movie, allegedly as a favour for
Margaret Rutherford who, in real life, had been married to actor
Stringer Davis since 1945. Stringer Davis does work quite well as a
sidekick, though.
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