Mrs Luther Crackenthorpe

In the novel 4.50 from Paddington, Mrs Luther Crackenthorpe was the late wife of Luther Crackenthorpe. She died long before the events in the story.

She had six children, Edmund, Cedric, Harold, Alfred, Emma and Edith. She disliked the names Luther gave the children. However, according to him, she was a poor-spirited creature, and always gave in, and so he persisted in giving the children what he thought were good Saxon names.

Portrayals
Mrs Crackenthorpe only appears on screen in one adaptation of the novel, that of ITV's 2004 version. There she is given the first name "Agnes". We see her only at the beginning of the show where she is dying. A letter from her son Edmund arrives just in time and Luther reads it to her, telling her that he is marrying a French girl Martine and that he is planning to bring her down to Rutherford Hall to meet the family. Agnes tells Luther that if she should die before she gets to see them, Luther is to tell them for her that only love matters, not money. She dies a few minutes after this. In this adaptation, Luther and Agnes were a loving couple and happy with each other. Luther had stood up to his father and refused to join him in the family business as confectionery manufacturers. Instead, he had pursued a liberal education which his father despised. As a result, his father had cut Luther out of his will and devised terms which caused the inheritance to skip a generation, giving him very little income to live on. However, Agnes had understood Luther's motives and supported him in his decision. Agnes was interred in a sarcophagus in a mausoleum on the grounds of Rutherford Hall. There was an empty sarcophagus for Luther next to it. This was where Lucy Eyelesbarrow found the body of a murdered woman.