Teresa Reviews Crime of the Gold Ingots (2005)

Teresa reviews Crime of the Gold Ingots (2005) and thought it was a beautiful adaption of the Miss Marple short story.

(Kinkai Jiken)

Source: DailyMotion

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 4 gold bars

The framing story’s been rewritten to accommodate Maybelle and the duck.

Quality of episode: 4 gold bars

Beautiful, evocative watercolors of Cornwall highlight Raymond’s gullibility.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

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“Ingots of Gold” was one of the Tuesday Club’s short stories, where a party guest tells a story about a mystery they know, and asks for a solution. After everyone takes their turn, Miss Marple provides the true solution. In this case, it’s Raymond’s story about his adventure near smugglers’ caves and wrecked treasure ships in Cornwall.

This opening was rewritten to remove the party and include Maybelle and Oliver, the duck. They’re busily exploring a gigantic haystack with all the other village kids, looking for vegetable prizes. Maybelle is so focused she reminds Miss Marple of when Maybelle’s father Raymond had similarly been so focused on what he thought was real he didn’t see what was in front of him.

What did Raymond believe? A load of tosh from a total stranger named Newman about diving for ancient Spanish gold off the coast of Cornwall. It’s not spelled out, but experienced wreck divers — of which Cornwall has many — would have found and stripped that ship decades ago. When your area hosts frequent shipwrecks, salvaging them becomes routine. And if there’s gold? There’s no reason to wait and it’s worth risking your life.

Raymond is gulled completely while an innocent man is persecuted because of his own unfortunate past, including being an experienced wreck diver. How does Miss Marple solve it?

By knowing her holidays. Raymond spots Newman’s gardener digging out a bed for rose bushes on Whit Monday. Miss Marple knows that Whit Monday, the day after Pentecost Sunday, is a holiday, and no real gardener would break his back on a high church holiday. It’s just not done.

And thus it proves: Newman needed a gullible, unimpeachable witness and Raymond, an imaginative novelist, fit the bill.