Teresa Reviews “Finessing the King” (1983)

Teresa reviews “Finessing the King” (1983) and believes it doesn’t come up trumps.

Fidelity to text: 3 1/2 daggers

Two short stories are combined, Bingo Hale shows up, as does an elderly waitress and a handgun.

Quality of movie on its own: 3 daggers

I didn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it either. It looked great and, my goodness, but Tuppence can afford stylish clothes despite their detective agency not having any clients.

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

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast.

This episode has a strange backstory. Agatha wrote one short story that got split in two (“Finessing the King” and “The Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper”) when published as Partners in Crime. The dividing line was Tuppence’s discovery of the body.

They’re parodies of a once-popular, now-forgotten American mystery writer, Isabel Ostrander. Isabel wrote under her own name and a variety of pen-names. She used a pair of detectives: Tommy McCarty, ex-policeman, and Denis Riordan, fireman, to solve her cases. Because her detectives are even more obscure today than Isabel Ostrander, Tommy and Tuppence dress up as a more familiar pair, Holmes and Watson.

Finessing the King opens in their home. Tommy talks about how newspapers coded their mastheads to allow newsstands and paperboys to know which is the current edition. This was back when newspapers printed several editions per day. They inserted tiny stars or spots into the masthead. The buying public never noticed, but the newsstand agent knew which stale papers needed to be sold quickly.

Tommy uses this ploy to divert Tuppence’s attention away from going dancing. There’s lots of witty banter, much of it lifted from the story, but I couldn’t understand it without subtitles. Since you’ll probably have the same issue, there are jokes about Tuppence cooking him dinner consisting of foods served at British boarding schools: kedgeree, rhubarb, junket, and nice gooey custard. Tommy was not enthusiastic.

Tuppence also complains about stay-at-home, boring husbands. She’d been brought up to believe that young husbands couldn’t get out of the house fast enough, with or without their wives. As always, she prevails.

A Notice in the Personals

They also noticed a paragraph in the personals column (printed on the front page of The Daily Leader, something newspapers also don’t do anymore):

“I should go with three hearts. 12 tricks.
Ace of Spades. Necessary to finesse the king.”

Tommy reads it as an expensive way of learning bridge, i.e., taking out newspaper adverts for each hand. Tuppence reads it as a secret message between illicit lovers.

Let’s tackle the bridge first. I’m a non-bridge player. I think finessing a king is a bridge play in which you force your opponent to waste a high-value card so you can pick up tricks later with your low-value cards.

Tuppence deciphers the message as arranging a meeting at the Three Arts fancy dress charity ball, followed by a tryst at the Ace of Spades seedy café at midnight. Finessing the king means they’re trying to fool her husband. Since it’s a costume party, she and Tommy have to dress up and naturally, they should dress like fictional detectives, thus the Holmes and Watson outfits.

They have a lovely time at the fancy dress party (a time-honored British tradition that didn’t seem to make it to the U.S.). Among the party-goers, they spot a lady dressed as the Queen of Hearts. There’s also a man appearing as The Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper (from the Tenniel illustration from Alice Through the Looking Glass and a subtle match for the Queen of Hearts). There’s also a devil in red satin.

Off to the Ace of Spades

Then, it’s off to the Ace of Spades for the afterparty. There, Tommy and Tuppence are taught about the drinks code by a chatty, elderly waitress (subtitles would have been so useful). She hints that some drink orders are real and some are code for alcohol served in cups. If the bobbies raid the joint, the customers can claim they’re sipping tea.

They watch the Queen of Hearts enter the curtained booth next to them, followed by the Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper (he’s wearing The Daily Leader). The man leaves, Tuppence’s intuition gets going, and she discovers the Queen of Hearts stabbed through her heart. The Queen’s barely alive but she moans, “Bingo did it.”

Bingo Hale is the Queen of Heart’s lover. His best friend, Sir Arthur, insists that a) Bingo and his wife, Lady Vere (she’s finally identified), would never canoodle and b) Bingo would never murder Lady Vere. Sir Arthur’s half-right. Bingo himself is unsure about the murder because he was very drunk that night. He’s arrested because his dagger is sticking out of Lady Vere’s heart, confirming Tuppence’s evidence. But during their interview at Wandsworth Prison, he tells our dynamic duo that he loved Lady Vere and they would have married if they could.

The film picks up when Inspector Marriot, our friendly local policeman, brings Sir Arthur to meet Tommy and Tuppence. Watch the British class system in action when Inspector Marriot tries to question Sir Arthur and states unpleasant truths. Sir Arthur isn’t having any of it and clearly wants pushy inspectors to remember their place at the bottom of the social register.

Inspector Marriot’s Moment

Inspector Marriot gets a chance to shine in this episode. He helped set up Tommy and Tuppence with the detective agency, which shows he’s willing to think outside the box. He’s also a good enough policeman to recognize a lie when he hears one.

Let’s go back to Lady Vere (the Queen of Hearts). Everyone knows — other than Sir Arthur — that’s she’s been canoodling with Bingo. She’s wealthy in her own right. Any policeman in the universe will tell you that when a rich, cheating woman is murdered, hubby is suspects number one through one hundred. It is that rare for her murderer to be someone else. Although we don’t witness these scenes, it’s clear from Inspector Marriot’s dialog that he’s been investigating Sir Arthur, and he doesn’t like what he’s found.

Yet the facts are plain. Lady Vere accused Bingo with her dying breath. She was also clutching a piece of Bingo’s newspaper costume in her hand, and that’s Bingo’s dagger driven into her heart. There are rumors that Bingo was seeing some American heiress, but he tells Tommy and Tuppence that it’s not true. There are suggestions this rumor drove Lady Vere to suicide, making it look like Bingo murdered her as her revenge on him. But that doesn’t pass the sniff test. Nor does Bingo murdering her feel right. If he’s got any sense at all, he’d wait until after the wedding so he’d inherit the boodle.

So why does Inspector Marriot harass Tommy and Tuppence? Because they might spot the break in the case that he knows is there, but he hasn’t found. And so they do. And, as you may guess from the beginning, it all comes back to the Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper. One masked man looks very much like another if their build is similar, and they’re wearing identical costumes constructed from The Daily Leader.

This episode functioned. It was clever in spots and there’s that great costume ball. But I wouldn’t watch it twice.

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