Teresa Reviews “The Case of the Missing Will” (1993)

Teresa Reviews “The Case of the Missing Will” (1993) and discovers adaptation doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder.

Fidelity to text: 1 poison bottle

The names match, educated women are regarded as unnatural, and there’s a missing will. Everything else disappeared down the river.

Quality of movie on its own: 2 poison bottles

The recreation of 1936 Cambridge was gorgeous. You could pole fleets of punts through the plot holes.

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

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

If you’re unfamiliar with a punt, you won’t thrill to the sight of them being poled beneath Cambridge’s Bridge of Sighs. A punt is the bastard offspring of a raft and a canoe. Someone gets to stand up — careful! — and push the light boat along the calm river using a long pole reaching into the river’s bed. Punting works best on placid, shallow water, with perhaps just a little current to add speed. Boats of any kind are always a plus in an Agatha Christie adaptation. Sadly, no action takes place on a punt.

Jerome K. Jerome famously sent his three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog) punting down the Thames. Their journey was adventurous, comedic, classic, and any lapses in plot were forgivable because there was so much to love.

Not here. There was no comedy or adventure. The plot didn’t make any sense, and the more Bill and I discussed it while walking the neighborhood in 30° weather with snow on the ground, the less sense it made. I would have welcomed a chase scene involving punts as a nice change from Hastings’ usual hot pursuit in a fast motorcar. I’m sure he can punt.

While we’re at it, I would have welcomed a change in weather! Once again, the weather was sunny and warm. I swear, with very few exceptions, Poirot episodes always take place on sunny June days, despite how few of them there actually are in the English calendar.

If you’re familiar with Agatha’s version, erase it from your mind. Thus, you won’t be startled when Andrew Marsh hosts a gala New Year’s Eve party in 1926. At midnight, he announces that he’s finally made a will. Apart from a few small bequests, the bulk of the estate goes to a medical charity. And his dear ward, Violet, whom he’s raised since she was a babe in arms? Nothing, because girls should be taken care of by their husbands.

Andrew Marsh is a Cambridge graduate, and so he’s steeped in tradition. I found his notion pretty hard to swallow because traditionally, young women were provided dowries. The dowry is supposed to help the woman set up her new household, offer protection against a negligent husband, provide for her widowhood, and take care of any children, even be passed down to them. Dowries are common worldwide. A dowry might be tiny or it might be huge, but it’s expected. Andrew Marsh couldn’t possibly be ignorant of this fact.

Then there’s the ridiculous debate scene that Poirot and Hastings arrive at, when the date springs forward to 1936. A debate is going on about the rights of women. Cambridge was backwards. They didn’t permit women to be fully fledged members until 1948, despite the presence of women-only colleges dating back to 1869 when Emily Davies founded Girton College.

But this is 1936! The debater rattles on about the horrors of women working in the fields and the munitions factories as if that had never happened before. What bridge was he living under? The Great War (1914- 1918) forced millions of women into the factories and onto the land to take the place of men fighting and dying in the trenches. Every person in England participated in the war effort (if they were old enough) or heard endless stories from their elders about participating in the war effort (if they weren’t). This is Cambridge, famous for its rigorous and historically based education.

I guess that debater spent all his time punting and not studying and none of his instructors cared. Worse, Andrew Marsh chimed in as though he — old enough to fight! — had had his memory wiped slick. These fine gentlemen also don’t notice the women laboring around them: parlor maids, housekeepers, cooks, laundresses, innkeepers, store clerks, typists, etc. At least that can be attributed to class blindness at its finest.

After the debate (which women were not allowed to participate, of course), Poirot and Hastings arrive at Crabtree Manor, Andrew Marsh’s palatial home, the home he’s not bequeathing to Violet. Andrew has a health crisis so Dr. Pritchard springs into action. Pay close attention to the lady assisting Dr. Pritchard. Have a drink every time you see her talk.

That night, Andrew tells Poirot he’s revising his will in Violet’s favor. You know what that means. Seconds — and I do mean seconds — after Andrew says he’ll meet his solicitor in the morning, he receives a mysterious phone call arranging for a late-night rendezvous in the folly. Off he goes, to meet someone he clearly knows. Okay, but how did this mysterious phone caller know that Andrew was on the verge of revising his will? At no point are we given the tiniest hint.

In the morning, Hastings and Violet are horseback riding. It’s before breakfast since they don’t comment on Andrew not appearing for his morning kippers and cold toast. Hastings spots Andrew in the folly, slumped over. Not acknowledging them. Our man Hastings may be a fool in a thousand ways but when needs must, he springs into action. He sends Violet for help and waits for the cavalry to arrive.

Poirot is instantly suspicious of the locals. They don’t seem to care that Andrew died suddenly in the folly after a mysterious late-night rendezvous. It’s heart failure. Well, as we’ll see, hearts do fail when their owner is injected with a huge quantity of insulin.

Soon after that, Miss Campion, Violet’s main sponsor at Cambridge and a close friend of Andrew, gets shoved down the escalator in London.

At this point, the plot falls apart completely. The dénouement demonstrates how little thought the scriptwriter put into his plot and how much Agatha put into hers. Poirot pulls the solution from his boutonnière vase, leaving you, dear reader, to say “What? Who did this? That person? But that person had, like, three lines of dialog in the entire 51-minute episode! That person thought they’d get a huge inheritance for their son on the basis of, of, of claiming something that couldn’t be proved?”

The more you think, the more questions appear. How did the murderer follow Miss Campion successfully to London and push her down the escalator? How did the murderer even know that Miss Campion went to London? How could the murderer think that anyone would believe their ridiculous story other than that Andrew Marsh was well known for having an eye for the ladies?

The last scene compounded the tragedies. We see Violet walking with Miss Campion in a Cambridge courtyard. Neither of them care about Andrew’s death. They care even less about the murderer, rending the murderer’s family into shreds, or the loss of Violet’s potential future family with Robert. Nothing.

Should you watch this? The Cambridge scenery is glorious. Miss Lemon’s dress magically changes colors. Those are your reasons.

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