John Reed

In the novel Murder is Easy, John Reed is the Constable in Wychwood. Miss Pinkerton thinks, despite his many qualities, he is not capable of solving a murder. He was also the one who discovered the dead body of Amy Gibbs. According to Bridget Conway, Reed climbed up a ladder and reached Amy's room through an open window (presumably she had locked her room door). On reaching the room, Reed discovered Amy dead.

Murder is Easy (1982 film)
In the 1982 film adaptation, Constable Reed is portrayed by Freddie Jones. Here he has a larger role than in the original novel and is involved with the investigation after the death of Amy Gibbs. Late in the story, Reed is the one who receives information from London regarding the licence plate of the car which knocked down Lavinia Pinkerton, information which points to Lord Easterfield as the suspect. In the original, Luke Fitzwilliam travelled to London and got the information from his Scotland Yard friend Sir William Ossington. Reed is shown to be intelligent and perceptive. He notes to Luke that the leads are all beginning to point to Lord Easterfield perhaps almost too well, almost like someone who had something to gain wanted him out of the way. When Luke countered that that person could just as easily have killed off Lord Easterfield directly, Reed disagreed. The person would be someone too close to his Lordship. To kill him directly would be too obvious. In Reed's estimation, the person to look at closely would be Bridget Conway. This is in keeping with pattern of leads unique to this adaptation which steadily build up suspicion on Bridget. Out looking for Bridget, Reed arrives at the climactic confrontation between Bridget and Honoria Waynflete in time to arrest the latter.

Agatha Christie's Marple
In the 2009 ITV adaptation of Murder is Easy, the character is renamed "P.C. Terence Reed" and he is portrayed by Russell Tovey.

In this adaptation he plays a much larger role than in the original novel. He does discover the death of Amy Gibbs in the same manner as described in the book. After testifying at her inquest, he actively collaborates with Miss Marple and Luke Fitzwilliam in solving the crime. He questions various witnesses and extends the inquiry further into, for example, whether they had alibis for the time Lavinia Pinkerton had fallen down the escalator in London. His clever technique, for example, in commenting that her husband's forthcoming new political commitments would leave little time for golf managed to elicit a statement from Lydia Horton which contradicted that of Major Horton. He said he had been playing golf the day Lavinia died but Mrs Horton said he had not played golf for over a year. Miss Marple, listening to the interviews from the adjacent pantry also provided him with tips on the pretext of serving him tea. Based on one tip, he extracted an admission from James Abbot that he had been seeing Amy Gibbs and he was the one who made her pregnant.

At the end of the round of interviews, Reed told Miss Marple that he felt like he had just taken an examination but Miss Marple commended him and said he passed with flying colours.