I do so love Margaret Rutherford who makes Agatha Christie's Ms. Jane Marple a most formidable and determined sleuth. Unfortunately this was one of Christie's weaker and way too coincidental plots.
Rutherford is on the 4:50 from Paddington station and while she's observing the passing scenery, a train passes in the opposite direction. Looking at that train she sees a pair of hands strangling a woman. Of course there's no body to be found after Rutherford calls for the police.
But things like that don't faze Margaret Rutherford in the slightest. With the aid of her friend and real life husband Stringer Davis, she walks the length of the track and does find some clues as to where the body might have been flung out the window. Turns out to be on a large estate and then Rutherford goes to work at the estate in the guise of a maid so she can continue her sleuthing.
The household is headed by James Robertson Justice who is one booming hypochondriac, the despair of his ever present doctor, Arthur Kennedy. The scenes with JRJ and Rutherford are the best in the film.
Of course the murder does have something to do with the estate and for me that's way too much to swallow that the murderer could have so contrived the crime to occur when the train was passing at the proper time for the body to be thrown out precisely where it was.
Still Margaret Rutherford is always a delight and Christie fans will like what she did with Agatha's formidable spinster sleuth.
Rutherford is on the 4:50 from Paddington station and while she's observing the passing scenery, a train passes in the opposite direction. Looking at that train she sees a pair of hands strangling a woman. Of course there's no body to be found after Rutherford calls for the police.
But things like that don't faze Margaret Rutherford in the slightest. With the aid of her friend and real life husband Stringer Davis, she walks the length of the track and does find some clues as to where the body might have been flung out the window. Turns out to be on a large estate and then Rutherford goes to work at the estate in the guise of a maid so she can continue her sleuthing.
The household is headed by James Robertson Justice who is one booming hypochondriac, the despair of his ever present doctor, Arthur Kennedy. The scenes with JRJ and Rutherford are the best in the film.
Of course the murder does have something to do with the estate and for me that's way too much to swallow that the murderer could have so contrived the crime to occur when the train was passing at the proper time for the body to be thrown out precisely where it was.
Still Margaret Rutherford is always a delight and Christie fans will like what she did with Agatha's formidable spinster sleuth.