Here is another film adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel. This time without
either Poirot or Miss Marple. There is though a Miss Marple type character
that Christie promptly happily kills off near the beginning. There were times
she grew very tired of her two main sleuths and wanted them dead ala Arthur
Conan Doyle with Holmes. And of course she finally did with Poirot in her
last novel with him. This is a TV movie and from a novel I have not read
and it was enjoyable for once not knowing who the killer was ahead of time.
It took me a while but I did eventually get there. A solid cast with Bill
Bixby, Leslie-Anne Down, Helen Hayes, Olivia de Havilland and Jonathan Pryce.
TV production values just as one expects from this period.
Bixby is a professor of probability on his way to London when at a stop a
little old lady gets into his car. After some chitchat she tells him that
she is going to Scotland Yard to report four murders and a fifth that will
soon happen and names that person. She says she knows who it is but no one
would believe her or believe these were murders. Murder she says is easy
if no one suspects you. She is played by Helen Hayes and to add to the thought
that this is a Miss Marple substitute, Hayes once played her in A Caribbean
Mystery. Once in London Bixby meets a friend at the station and as they are
about to go off he hears a scream. It turns out our little detective has
been killed in a hit and run. Bixby can't believe this is chance and so persuades
his friend to take him to the small town where he wants to snoop a bit. Once
he meets up with Lesley-Anne Down he really wants to snoop. Who wouldn't?
Oh, and that fifth person? Just died. Little old ladies in small English
towns? They notice everything.
