Here Miss Marple is Julia McKenzie, but she's so different from the previous actress that I'm not going to make any comparison between them. I like them both. This is one of those times when the story follows quite well the original plot in the book, I think.
The story begins with orphan Gladys (Rose Heiney) leaving Miss Marple after working for her for some time. They are clearly fond of each other: Marple says "be careful, specially of the young men"; Gladys says "you've been ever so good to me Miss Marple", then off she goes. Nine months later we see Rex Fortescue feeling very bad and shouting "what the hell did you put in the tea?" to his secretary, but luckily for her after the man's death it is proven that he was poisoned much earlier, and her tea had nothing to do with it. They find his pocket full of "cereal, rye it looked like to me" which explains the title. The investigation moves to his house where he had his breakfast (well, his first breakfast apparently, Englishmen are all hobbits it would seem). When questioned, Gladys (now working here as a maid) says first thing "I didn't do it sir, I didn't really", and on why she left Miss Marple she says "I wanted to change, I wanted to see the world". Poor girl.
After Rex, his young wife is poisoned too, and Gladys is found dead in the garden, because this apparently fits with some nursery rhyme the murderer is enacting. Marple reads of her death in the papers, and comes knocking at their door offering her help as someone who knew Gladys. She talks to the inspector, trying to have her way by the means of flattering: "you have the look of a young Errol Flynn about you", and also "you strike me as a most intelligent and if I may say so impressive young man" all this to get what she wants "would it be presumptuous if I were to offer assistance in some very humble way (..)people do tend to confide in old ladies, don't you think?" :-p
So she starts investigating, looking around and talking to people in the house. There's the cook Mrs Crump and her husband, a disgusting old drunk. There's Mary Dove (Helen Baxendale) who sort of run the house: "it's a job, one I do to the best of my ability; people would pay anything, anything, to be spared the domestic worries". She also says "take no notice of me, I'm a malicious creature", and at the end it apparently turned out that every household she worked for was robbed after she left, implying I gather that she was part of the gang, informing the thieves, which is quite bad, and I was sorry to hear that because I kind of liked her. I don't remember what was of her in the book...
Little warning, lots of spoilers right ahead.
In the house now there are late Mr Fortescue's sons and daughter. Percival (Ben Miles) who worried about the family business that Rex was destroying, affected by dementia he had been losing money for the last 18 months, selling good stocks and buying bad ones; Lancelot (Rupert Graves) come back from Kenya, and their wives; also Elaine, who was in love with a man that had disappeared because her father strongly disapproved, but is back now ready to marry her.
Inspector Neele (Matthew MacFayden) suspects Percival, because since his father would not admit to being ill ("I don't need no bloody doctor!") his sudden death saved him from sure bankruptcy. Lancelot is the black sheep of the family, but his wife is quite lovely: she already lost two husbands, and as Marple puts it "she's the kind that always marries the bad lot".
The nursery rhyme thing was all a pretense, a distraction, to throw attention and suspicion on a family that hated Rex Fortescue.
When Mr KcKenzie died (of a fever, Rex said) Rex took his "Blackbird Mine". Mrs McKenzie once came to the house with her children, and raised them to hate him. Now her son is dead, and her daughter has changed her name and married Percival as a kind of 'subtle vengeance', and she was the one to put dead black birds in his office, but that was it; the murderer was Lancelot, who had met and easily seduced Gladys, and sent her to work there after telling her a pack of lies. Gladys poisoned Rex not knowing it was poison, than Lancelot killed her. Marple explains it all to the inspector, and then she goes away, although it looks like to me that there are no proof yet against him, and yet it would seem like they're about to arrest him.
Once back home, Marple sees a letter that, exactly like in the book, has arrived late because it had been delivered to the wrong address. It was from Gladys, seeking her advice after Rex's death, and the letter told her exactly what she had suspected and told the inspector, plus it included a picture of her man Albert, a picture of Lancelot. If necessary, she has now all the proof they need.
The reading of the letter was quite a touching moment, and Marple herself was rather touched by poor Gladys' words and fate. Poor silly girl that had believed every word he had said to her..
A curious detail: Mrs McKenzie says "nothing is settled until it is settled right", the same words Dr Calgary said in "ordeal by innocence".
One more thing: it rather surprised me that I did not like Rupert Graves here, but maybe it is a compliment to his acting, that I found him as much slimy and unpleasant here as he is gorgeous, funny and generally lovely in Sherlock.
ITA polvere negli occhi
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento