Muriel Wills

In the novel Three Act Tragedy, Muriel Wills is a playwright, also known as Anthony Astor. She is one of the guests at Sir Charles' cocktail party. She lives at 5 Upper Cathcart Road, Tooting.

She wrote a play called One-Way Traffic, which Mr Satterthwaite said made a great hit. It was acclaimed as one of the most witty and daring seen in London for some time. She also writes Little Dog Laughed, a play which Angela Sutcliffe is to star in. Miss Wills describes it as a "modern version of the nursery rhyme -- a lot of froth and nonsense".

Miss Wills is described as "tall and thin, with a receding chin and very badly waved fair hair". She wears pince-nez, and has blue eyes. Her voice is high and undistinguished. Lady Mary Lytton Gore is surprised to learn that this is Anthony Astor, the playwright, as she feels that Miss Wills looks "exactly like an inefficient nursery governess".

Mr Satterthwaite notes that Miss Wills is extremely observant. She is also described as having "poked and pried" about at Melfort Abbey.

Captain Dacres claims to have seen Miss Wills come out of his room on the morning after the death of Sir Bartholomew Strange. He says that she came out of his room, and went through the door at the end of the passage, to the servants' quarters. Poirot later explains that she did this because of her insatiable curiosity.

Miss Wills tells Sir Charles Cartwright that the butler at Melfort Abbey, Ellis, had a strawberry mark on his left wrist. She later appears to be unsure whether it was on his left or right wrist, and asks Sir Charles to hand her a plate as Ellis had done. After this, she is sure that it was on his left wrist.

Sir Charles later goes to Tooting, hoping to talk to Miss Wills a second time. However, he is told that she left home that morning, and had sent a telegram to her people, telling them that she would not return for a few days.

It is later revealed that Miss Wills had noticed Ellis' hands. On a later occasion, she had seen the murderer, and had recognised their hands as being the same as the hands she had seen on Ellis. This put her in danger, and so Poirot advised her to leave home. While she was in hiding, she stayed at the same hotel as Poirot.

Portrayals
In Murder in Three Acts (1986), the character played by Concetta Tomei. The name is changed to "Miss Janet Crisp". She is a playwright who uses the pen name "Martin Blador". In the adaptation, she notices a scar on the wrist on the butler "Carlos Morales". Later she sees the same scar on the wrist of Sir Charles Cartwright. She became afraid and told Poirot about this, thus helping him to solve the crime. At the end of the show, Poirot credits her with having a "mongoose instinct" for sniffing out mysteries. Poirot had been unsuccessfully trying to write his memoirs and asks her if she would be interested in collaborating on the work, which she eagerly accepted.

In the film adaptation of Three Act Tragedy in Series 12 of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot drama series, the part of Muriel Wills is played by Kate Ashfield. Here she did not explore the Melfort Abbey House looking for the supposed tunnel. Nor did she spot a newspaper article about the poisonous properties of nicotine dropping out of the pocket of Oliver Manders. She does however recognise the hand of Sir Charles Cartwright as being the same as that of the butler "Ellis" at Melfort Abbey. In one of the closing lines of the book Satterthwaite says of the first murder, "It could have been me." As Satterthwaite does not appear in the adaptation, the line is inherited by Muriel Wills.