I liked this one, the actors and the story, and they also put Mark Gatiss in it, which is always a good and proper thing to do. I also liked Jason Flemyng (how he talked and his voice) and Janet McTeer very much.
We see Marple's past, when she was a girl (Julie Cox) in love. We see captain Hemsworth having his picture taken (December 1915), while Mrs Hemsworth is there, a bit sad that he doesn't want her to go to the station to say goodbye. Then we see him meeting young Jane at the station, and if in the scene before he had said "my darling Lizzie" now he says "Jane, my darling" ... come on Jane Marple, a married man?? Apparently he had a word with the photographer to have a copy of the picture sent to her, that's how she has it. Anyway, she loved him and cried, but made her choice: I've had to make a choice, I've chosen to do my duty. Come back safe but for your wife not for me"
Marple's house is right in front of the vicarage, so she story starts with her seeing the vicar "early for a change" and then meeting everyone in the church. Right after, troubles arise when Marjorie is sure she put a pound in the church box, but apparently the church raised less than a pound so where did it go? Colonel Protheroe (Derek Jacobi) is a judge and also warden, so he wants a full investigation.He is a very unpleasant man, shouting at everybody and breaking poor Mr Hawes' bike with his car, although in this particular case he is quite right. What happens when a priest does something wrong somewhere? They send him somewhere else, where nobody knows him, they still do it, but I'll come back to Mr Ronald Hawes (Mark Gatiss) later. We know all the characters before anything bad happens. The vicar Leonard "Lenny" Clement (Tim McInnerny) and his wife Griselda (Rachael Stirling), the colonel's wife Anne (Janet McTeer) and his daughter Lettice (Christina Cole), plus painter Lawrence Redding (Jason Flemyng) and mysterious Mrs Sylvia Lester (Jane Asher). Mr Hawes being "a bag of nerves" and always taking pills, Lettice being painted in a bathing suit to the anger of her father, Marple reading Raymond Chandler's novel "the simple art of murder" :-p We see the colonel/judge sending the vicar's maid's young man to prison for 29 days, and Redding keeping his gun loose in the house for anybody to see.
Things start getting complicated when the vicar sees Anne and Lawrence kissing in the shed, and also all the women in Marple's house see what happened, so their secret relationship's not secret anymore.
Sylvia Lester meets the colonel and tells him about his wife's affair.
Redding talks to Marple and says "I do love her you know", because now everybody knows about it, and he also says "nothing gets past you Miss Marple, does it?" - "hardly ever", the quite proud reply.
Anne is a friend of Marple, so she goes to her house because Marple has hurt her ankle and can't walk as before. She receives a phone call calling her to the vicarage. Redding had just spoken to the vicar and stated that he was going to break it up and go away, so when Anne goes in the shed it is assumed that the two of them are about to break up. The vicar also got a phone call and went away, and when he came back he found the colonel shot dead in the study.
Inspector Slack (Stephen Tompkinson) comes to investigate and at first he treats Marple like an old stupid, but quite soon he'll have to change his opinion :-p
Lettice suspects Anne for the murder, but Redding goes to confess. His story however is not satisfying. The murder is supposed to have taken place at 6.20pm because the clock was knocked off and broken, but Marple says "I'm afraid I must put a cat among inspector Slack's pigeons" (:lol: that's another book), and also "it's the clock. I happen to know Mrs Clement put it a quarter of an hour fast on Sunday to improve the vicar's punctuality". Anne confesses too, but Marple saw that she had no bag and no way to conceal a gun in that dress. The bullet came from Redding's gun, though.
Anne and Lawrence play it heartbroken now, for their story is supposed to be over. Stranger Sylvia reveals to be Lettice's mother who now wants her back in her life. Sylvia divorced the colonel because she liked parties and had a little fling (actually, how she came to marry such a man in the first place??), then her second husband died and she finally found the courage to look for Lettice.
I loved that when the vicar found Anne's earring in the study (Lettice put it there) he told Marple instead of the police :-) and he also shows her the anonymous letter "watch your wife" :-p it's very easy for Marple to discover (somehow, we are not told how) that it was Marjorie, she had seen Griselda with a young man, plus she was not where she said she was.
The vicar's jealousy was quite sweet. "I'm so lucky, she could have had anyone"; Marple says "she chose you" but he's probably worried that she might want something more that a life at the vicarage. Now he's jealous, afraid she might have a fling with Redding who is making her portrait. Sweet silly man :-) Griselda had kept a secret knowing how gossipy the village is, and had consulted a cousin doctor to be sure. She's pregnant, and they're happy together again :-)
There's a French professor staying at the Colonel's house with his granddaughter. He was there to find proof against the colonel: during the war he betrayed his grandson who died, tortured and killed. The girl was actually in special operations, and was to marry him. The professor that day went to kill the colonel but was too late as he found him already dead.
I like Mark Gatiss a lot, I like how he says his lines :-) when that old gossipy woman asked him "was there much blood?" and he replied "how would I know that?" I so liked the way he said that :-)
Miss Marple finds out that Mr Hawes was sent away (from where he was before..) for 'fiddling with the accounts', and not it appears he has committed suicide because the colonel had accused him of stealing, but luckily he is saved. The inspector tells Marple "nothing gets past you Miss Marple , does it?" and again she replies "hardly ever", and now she understands everything, how they had tried to play her. "How clever!" she exclaims almost in admiration, then "how wicked" with reproach. She has Dennis take her to Ronald's house in a sidecar :-p to tell the inspector the whole truth.
Anne had hurt Marple's ankle on purpose, to have her stay at home. Redding hide his gun with a silencer in the study, then quietly had his talk with the vicar. It had been all deliberate, to have the vicar find them together. Then Redding phoned twice: to send the vicar away from home and the second to Marple's cottage for Anne. She had on purpose that dress on, so that Marple could see she had no gun with her. Anne went into the study, took the hidden gun and shot her husband dead. Redding later removed the gun and put the fake note, and took the colonel's real note, and reset the clock "knowing it was fast" and broke it, and then he used the colonel's real note to implicate Hawes in the murder, when he tried to kill him (it wasn't suicide of course).
Redding was no stranger to Anne when he came to St Mary Mead. He was her great love that "didn't come back from the fighting", unless he did come back, four years later when she was already Mrs Protheroe. He kept away, apparently he was too decent to look for her now that she was married, so she found him.
At the end, she talks about it with Miss Marple who thought of her as a good friend, and then she asks: "what did we do wrong?" - "you ask me that?" - "what mistakes did we make?" :-/ she still doesn't consider what she did wrong, apparently :-/
Anyway, Marple says "when you came out of the shed with him you were the same woman, you hadn't said goodbye to the man you loved?" - "you could tell that?" - "you think I've never... I've lost someone in the war who got a medal for dying. His wife will have cherished it"- "His wife? Easier for you then Jane, he was dead, you didn't have to choose between right and wrong"
Of course we know that she did choose, before he left, but Marple says nothing to her.
At the end, Marple is reading a new book (we had seen that the other was at the final pages) and it is "farewell my lovely" :-p
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