Teresa Reviews “Murder Ahoy!” (1964)

Fidelity to text: 1/2 poison bottles

There are scraps of plot from They Do It With Mirrors lurking under the waves surrounding the H.M.S. Battledore. But other than Miss Marple, nothing remains of Agatha Christie.

Quality of movie on its own: 2 poison bottles

Murky, muddy, dragging when it should be sailing along. The movie is as anchor-bound as the ship most of the action takes place on.

This movie will make a lot more sense if you’ve read They Do It with Mirrors, a genuine Miss Marple property unlike the two previous Margaret Rutherford outings. The underlying plot stolen from the novel is simple. The trust benefitting a home for wayward boys is being embezzled. At the same time, the wayward boys are being trained, a la Fagin, as burglars. The two crimes are unrelated. The embezzler is unaware of the thieves’ ring, and the person running the theft scheme doesn’t know about the embezzling.

We set sail in a promising fashion. Miss Marple gets fitted for a quasi-Royal Navy uniform and joins the board of a trust treating misguided youth. Why the naval uniform? Because the facility is the H.M.S. Battledore, a tall sailing ship operated by a crew charged with instilling backbones into young jellyfish.

But during the first trustee’s board meeting, one of its members dies suddenly before he can reveal the dreadful truth about the H.M.S Battledore.

His death is diagnosed as a heart attack by the brisk country doctor, but Miss Marple is suspicious. She deduces poisoned snuff, based on her close reading of the mystery The Doom Box by J. Plantagenet Corby. It’s no wonder Inspector Craddock thinks Miss Marple is unhinged.

But it turns out Miss Marple is correct when she discovers traces of strychnine in the remaining snuff. How does she do this? By turning into Sherlock Holmes and using her girl’s junior chemistry set and analyzing the snuff.

Never forget that the Margaret Rutherford version of Miss Marple is a force to be reckoned with and comes loaded with hidden talents.

She and Mr. Stringer go off to investigate. Miss Marple insists on moving onboard the Battledore, and as the senior person on board, displaces Captain Rhumstone from his stateroom. Since rank has its privileges, Captain Rhumstone, evicts Commander Breeze-Connington from his quarters, who moves out Lt. Commander Dimchurch, and on down the line until Sub Lt. Humbert ends up sleeping in a hammock in a corner of the hold.

Miss Marple outmaneuvers the captain again, getting him to ask her to stay longer than one night to inspect the ship. This gives her time to investigate and pass information via Morse code to Mr. Stringer, snug in a hotel room overlooking the bay where the Battledore rides at anchor.

There’s a whole lot of running around at night onboard the Battledore, with Miss Marple and the other characters skulking around. It remains on the verge of turning into a fun French bedroom farce, but each time the action stalls and nothing funny happens.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stringer follows the boys on shore leave (looking crackerjack in their flap-collared jumpers and white anklets) and discovers they’re robbing houses.. He rows between the hotel’s quay and the ship to tell Miss Marple, unnoticed by the ship’s watch. That’s criminal neglect of good seamanship.

The next morning, Miss Marple discovers the second body. Lt. Compton has been run through with a sword and hung from the yardarm. How no one, even the captain who was on deck for his morning shower, noticed the body swinging freely, is more evidence of how badly the ship is being run.

The plot is complicated further by the death of Assistant Matron Shirley Boston by, believe it or not, a poisoned mousetrap.
Miss Marple recognizes the murder method because it, like the death of Lt. Compton, is right out of The Doom Box, which she not only owns but was in the ship’s library. The collection of expensive jewelry found near her body is not from the book. Miss Marple deduces this is the action of a second criminal onboard the Battledore.

Shirley’s story — involving her two junior officer swains — was particularly murky. She was leading on the socially well-connected Sub Lt. Humbert because he got her into posh country houses for posh parties. She’d case the joint during the party, then tell Lt. Compton — with whom she was also carrying on with — where to send the wayward boys to break in and steal the jewelry. She’s a hot brunette, so it’s plausible as long as both junior officers turned off their brains. Sailors do that when faced with hot brunettes. There’s a scene where Shirley is seated between the two junior officers, holding hands with one and stroking the back of the other. But I couldn’t tell who was who.

Another red herring involves Lt. Commander Dimchurch, but it is so poorly developed it shouldn’t be there at all. Capt. Rhumstone and Matron Fanbraid have a romance arc of their own that should have been on full, glorious display during the sneaking-around-the-ship-at-midnight scenes. That was a wasted opportunity. I would have also liked to have seen more scenes with the wayward boys being taught seamanship and thievery.

At last, after still more wasted chances at quality writing, Miss Marple uncovers the murderer. I could buy the murderer’s motivation: if you’re ambitious, being passed over for promotion is difficult to swallow. It was harder to buy Chief Inspector Craddock and Sergeant Bacon being unable to figure out another way out of the hold. It’s true that ships are built like three-dimensional mazes but once they realized they were stuck, they should have gone deeper into the hold and found another way up topside.

But I really couldn’t buy Miss Marple holding her own in a sword duel. Sure, she was the ladies’ fencing champion in 1931. But this is 33 years later! Has she been practicing her fencing for the last 33 years? And she’s in good enough shape to not fall prostrate to the deck within minutes of whipping out a saber? Both her and the murderer should have had heart attacks. I’ll admit Margaret Rutherford could handle a sword. She practiced for a month for the scene but she’s still 70 years old. Even Rocky Balboa knew when to stop fighting. I suppose this is part and parcel of her retaining her golf talents, horsemanship skills, and marksmanship abilities, each showcased in the climax of the three previous movies.

Is there anything to like about Murder Ahoy? The ship is nice. Very nice. It’s Training Ship Arethusa, built in 1911. She was in service with the Royal Navy for a while, then repurposed as a home for wayward boys; a case of art imitating life. Only the stern, where Captain Rhumstone’s cabin is located, is pure Hollywood magic.
Even with that enhancement, I would have liked to have seen more of the Arethusa.

There are also some good moments. It’s a pleasure to watch Mr. Stringer and Miss Marple together. Their affection for each other is palpable. Lionel Jeffries as Captain Rhumstone shamelessly overacts. He’d fit right in with the Cosgrove Players in Murder Most Foul. But this movie just didn’t jell. It needed a few more passes on the script. It should have sparkled like sunlight on breaking waves. Instead, it’s becalmed.