In her eighth outing as Miss Marple, Julia McKenzie best known for the BBC’s Cranford, is clearly comfortable in the part, neither too frail nor too cute to lower the deductive boom on unsuspecting murderers. This time around, it is personal. A friend of Miss Marple has been brutally struck down—a priest no less, on his way home from administering last rites for one of his faithful. Of course, Miss Marple suspects the two deaths are related.
Before his untimely demise, Father Gorman mailed a list of names to Miss Marple, rather than the dumb coppers. After an easy bit of detective work, she determines each person named died in a manner similar to the good Father’s parishioner and they all visited an eccentric country inn called the Pale Horse that specifically caters to visitors for village’s annual witch burning recreation.
If Marple fans do not remember her appearance in the original Pale Horse source novel that is because she was not there to be found. It was Poirot’s colleague Ariadne Oliver who first snooped around the suspicious inn. Given the gothic elements of the story, it seems like an odd choice to remix for Miss Marple, the quintessential cozy detective, but so be it.
