Agatha and the Truth of Murder is a 2018 British alternative history drama. Written by Tom Dalton and directed by Terry Loane, the film was first broadcast on 23 Dec 2018 on Channel 5. The film mixes the real events revolving around the disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926, as well as the murder of nurse Florence Nightingale Shore in 1920.
The film's closing credits starts with an announcement:
- ”This film has not been endorsed, licensed or authorised by the estate of Agatha Christie or by Agatha Christie Limited.”
Synopsis[]
In 1920 Nurse Florence Nightingale Shore (the goddaughter of her more famous namesake) is bludgeoned to death on a train. The murderer was never caught. Six years later, her friend Nurse Mabel Rogers visits Agatha Christie and urges her to help solve the crime. Agatha has problems of her own and besides, she is a writer, not a detective, but she eventually agrees to take up the trail with Mabel's help. To solve the crime, Agatha has to go undercover and disappear from the public view.
Plot summary[]
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)
It is 1926 and Agatha Christie has problems. Her writing is becoming stale and formulaic. Her readers are able to guess the murderers too easily, despite her best efforts to spin the plot. She consults Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on a golf course and he gives her his solution to writer's block: design a golf course. "It's like channeling the hand of God."
Back home Agatha has other problems. Archie wants a divorce but Agatha refuses to give it to him. In the midst of all this, one Nurse Mabel Rogers comes to see her, appealing to her to investigate the still unsolved 6-year old mystery of her friend Florence Nightingale Shore who was murdered on a train. Agatha declines--she has other problems and besides, she is a writer, not a detective. But Mabel leaves her the research file of the case.
Carlo tries to encourage Agatha suggesting that they get back into writing but Agatha says she needs professional help: she goes and consults Sir Hugh Persimmion on how to design a golf-course. Sir Hugh tells her she can't: its too complicated for a woman. Undeterred, Agatha builds a model of a golf course and starts designing it but soon gets frustrated. Looking around, she notices Mabel's file and starts to read it. (As an aside, later, Archie actually liked the golf course she designed and offered to stay home and talk with Agatha about it. Agatha is grateful for this but by then she was too engrossed in the case at hand).
Intrigued, she visits Mabel who gives her a summary of the case and her list of plausible suspects:
- Randolph, Florence's cousin who inherited her trust fund
- Zaki Hanachi, an Algerian soldier whom Florence tended and who later pestered her, presumably to borrow money
- Travis Pickford, a boxer and thieft who was cleared by the police at that time
- Nurse Daphne Miller, a nurse who would have lost her job because of a report for negligence which Florence was about to make.
There was also "a Man in the Brown Suit" who got into the same train but witnesses reported someone else of different build leaving the compartment at a station. There was a woman who occupied a compartment so Mabel found a different compartment for Florence. Agatha realises that Mabel has omitted many relevance points. Mabel has Florence's diaries, for example. Moreover, Florence was going to see one Pamela Rose. Florence had tended her son James who died during the war. She knew about Florence being on the train so she should be considered a suspect.
To find the truth, Agatha sends invitations to these suspects under the guise of Mary Westmacott, asking them to gather in a country house to determine their share of an inheritance from some ancestor. Mabel, also undercover, would serve as the housekeeper. The suspects arrive, Daphne accompanied by her grasping, greedy father Wade Miller and Pamela Rose by her son Franklin, an ex-priest.
From preliminary interviews, Agatha settles on Wade Miller as the prime suspect. He is shifty and changes his line to strengthen his case, doesn't let his daughter speak and when it came to his daughter's alleged neligence, insists that she was exonerated by an inquiry and that Florence who brought the charges "got what she deserved". To test reactions of the others and secure Wade's cooperation, Agatha hints that Daphne may get the larger share of the inheritance. Agatha asks Mabel to secure more evidence by searching Wade's things but before anything can proceed, Wade is shot dead and falls from an upstairs window.
The remaining people in the house are now in a classical country house closed circle. Inspector Dix arrives, complaining that because most of his men are out searching for Agatha Christie who has gone missing, he must conduct his investigations at the house. To complicate matters further, Travis Pickford and Mabel Rogers soon go missing. Mabel is eventually found with Wade's gun (the murder weapon) and she is arrested by Inspector Dix. Privately Inspector Dix tells Agatha that he knows who she really is. She shares her belief that Daphne is the one who killed her father--he had been abusive and had beaten her. Dix shares the same belief, and thinks a court might be lenient. Now Agatha convinces Dix to help trap the killer of Florence. She had been looking up Florence's diaries and notes a name: a German officer Captain Dietrich Keller--this must be the link.
Through an arranged set of circumstances, Agatha finds herself alone in a room with Pamela Rose and Franklin. She accuses them of murdering Florence. Captain Dietrich Keller shot Pamela's son James although an armistice had been declared. Keller himself was gravely wounded and everyone thought he should be left to die. Florence however had moral scruples and tended to Keller himself. James died but Keller survived. Franklin confesses to the killing and attacks Agatha, trying to strangle her. Just in time, Inspector Dix and the others burst into the room--they had been next door and heard everything. Pamela Rose challenges Dix: the evidence they have (including what they overheard) wouldn't be enough. Their "entrapment" had failed. Dix now surprises them by arresting Pamela and Franklin for the murder of Wade Miller instead. The others conspire to back this up. Zaki Hanachi (who has grown affectionate about Daphne) for example declares he saw Pamela take Wade's gun. They also have a blackmail note left by Pamela Rose to force Daphne to hide Wade's gun under Mabel's pillow.
Dix, Agatha and Mabel reflect on the case before parting ways at the train station. Agatha would feign loss of memory to explain her disappearance. Dix would help with the cover story. Mabel wonders if they had done the right thing. There was justice, but a funny kind of justice, delivered by a group of strangers. She asks Agatha what made her settle on Pamela as the killer. Agatha says that besides Mabel, only Pamela and Franklin knew that Florence was going to be on that train. Once she got past her fantasies and focussed on the facts, it was quite obvious. Inspector Dix remarks that it is a shame that the truth of murder in real life doesn't lend itself to good detective novels. It would never do to have the most obvious person end up as the culprit. Agatha stands up as though she has had an epiphany.
In the closing scene, we see Agatha putting the finishing touches to the manuscript of a novel. The title is "The Truth of Murder". She crosses it out and writes "Death on the Nile".
Closing credits in alphabetical order[]
- Dean Andrews as Wade
- Ruth Bradley as Agatha Christie
- Bebe Cave as Daphne
- Amelia Rose Dell as Rosalind
- Richard Doubleday as Postmaster Wilson
- Derek Halligan as Mr. Todd
- Blake Harrison as Travis Pickford
- Pippa Haywood as Mabel Rogers
- Stacha Hicks as Florence Nightingale Shore
- Ralph Ineson as Detective Inspector Dicks
- Brian McCardie as Sir Hugh Persimmion
- Michael McElhatton as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Tim McInnerny as Randolph
- Clare McMahon as Carlo
- Liam McMahon as Archie
- Seamus O'Hara as PC Spencer
- Luke Pierre as Zaki Hanachi
- Joshua Silver as Franklin
- Samantha Spiro as Pamela
References to actual history, geography, and current science[]
- The real murder of Florence Nightingale Shore took place on a train, as depicted in the film. Mabel Rogers is an actual person who was Florence's friend. There really was a witness/suspect which the newspapers termed "The Man in the Brown Suit". Agatha Christie might have read the press coverage and used the phrase as the title of her 1924 novel The Man in the Brown Suit.[1][2]
Research notes[]
- The closing scene takes place many years later: there is a photo of Agatha with Max Mallowan at an archaological dig. Death on the Nile was published in 1937 so this scene is not anachronistic.
References[]
- ↑ Around Ealing.com/history/Truth of Murder
- ↑ Jennifer Trueland, "The Nightingale murder: the mysterious killing of a Queen's Nurse in 1920 is the subject of a new book", Nursing Standard, Vol 26 issue 44, 7 Dec 2011. URL