Walter Cracken

Walter Cracken is a non-canonical character created for the 2013 ITV adaptation of Greenshaw's Folly. He is the butler of Miss Greenshaw at Greenshaw's Folly. Walter Cracken is portrayed by Vic Reeves (billed as Jim Moir in the credits).

Cracken cut a fairly sinister figure at the beginning when he receives Louisa Oxley and her son Archie to the house. Later, he is shown telling Archie stories about the Greenshaw ghost (a ghost of a child). Subsequently Archie would claim that he say it. However, Cracken is soon killed in a fall from a high ladder while trying to fix a flickering light bulb.

As Cracken had a history of drinking, Inspector Welch quite quickly concludes that the death is an accident. This was moreover supported by the presence of an empty decanter of liquor in the library which Miss Greenshaw said was full only the day before.

It is only towards the end of the episode that Father Brophy tells Miss Marple that Cracken had not been drinking for some ten years, ever since the death of his wife. Apparently she had died when their house caught fire. Many villagers gossiped that it was Cracken who caused the fire while in a drunken state. During the denouement that Miss Marple postulates that Cracken was probably pushed and moreover, he had been sedated by atropine (which could produce effects which look like drunkenness. Miss Marple surmised that Cracken had to be killed because he had seen the housekeeper Mrs Cresswell behaving like a mother to Nat Fletcher. This might have endangered their plot to gain control of the Greenshaw estate.