He administered a second, fatal dose of arsenic while supposedly attending to Albert.Īs with most of her portrayals of Miss Marple, Margaret Rutherford's interpretation was quite different from Agatha Christie's. He intended to dispose of the other heirs and marry Emma. Quimper feared that the compact, a gift to his wife, could be traced to him. The dead woman was not Martine at all, but his own wife. Miss Marple, however, is not deceived, and sets a trap, using the compact as bait. The police are unsure if it was suicide by a remorseful murderer or the third victim. Then Harold is killed by his own shotgun. When Emma reveals that she recently received a letter from a French woman named Martine, who claims that she married Edmund shortly before he died and is therefore an heir, the identity of the dead woman and the motive for the crime seem clear.Īrsenic in the curried duck prepared by Miss Marple sickens all who eat it, but only Albert dies. The gardener, Hillman, and the part-time servant Mrs Kidder round out the establishment and the list of suspects.Īlexander finds the first clue, a musical compact that plays ' Frère Jacques', near where the body must have landed. (A fourth son, Edmund, was killed in the war.) Also, Dr Quimper, Ackenthorpe's physician, and Emma are secretly in love. Stringer uncovers the details of Ackenthorpe's will: the family fortune is to go to his long-suffering, attentive daughter Emma his sons Cedric, Harold and Albert and Alexander, his intelligent and insightful grandson. She eventually finds it concealed in a stable, much to the chagrin of Police Inspector Craddock. Wheedling her way into a job as housekeeper, Miss Marple copes with her difficult employer, Luther Ackenthorpe ( James Robertson Justice), and searches for the missing corpse. The police find nothing to support her story, so she conducts her own investigation and, with the aid of her close friend Jim Stringer, comes to the conclusion that the body must have been thrown off the train near the grounds of Ackenthorpe Hall.

While travelling by train, Miss Marple witnesses the strangling of a young woman in another train on a parallel track. MGM made three sequels, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy!, all with Rutherford starring as Miss Marple. The production stars Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, along with Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow, James Robertson Justice, and Stringer Davis (Rutherford's husband). Murder, she said is a 1961 comedy/murder mystery film directed by George Pollock, based on the 1957 novel 4.50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie.

4.50 from paddington