Rachel Bell as Mrs Nicoletis
In the novel Hickory Dickory Dock, Mrs Christina Nicoletis is a Greek woman who owned the student hostel at Hickory Road. In addition she ran several other student clubs and organisations. These establishments gave her access to large numbers of students whom she would use to service her smuggling network. Poirot suspected, however that she only supplied the financial backing to the smuggling operation but that the brains had to come from someone else.
Miss Lemon, based on the account of her sister Mrs Hubbard, described Mrs Nicoletis as "a woman of very uncertain temper, sometimes charming and sometimes ... quite the reverse...." She could be "both cheese-paring and impractical." Her erratic behaviour was later explained when a police search of the premises at Hickory Road uncovered a huge hoard of empty liquor bottles in her cupboard. Mrs Nicoletis was murdered after drinking brandy which had been poisoned.
At the end of the case, she was revealed to be the mother of Valerie Hobhouse who also worked in the smuggling network.
Portrayals[]
In the 1995 ITV TV film adaptation, Mrs Nicoletis is portrayed by Rachel Bell. The portrayal is faithful to the description in the original novel. In addition to the hostel, in this adaptation, she also owned the shop selling rucksacks across the street and had a cousin Giorgios Nicoletis, a jeweller who bought and laundered the diamonds which her network brought in.
In Pension Vanilos, the TV film adaptation of the novel by France Télévisions, the parallel character is Solange Vanilos who is actually a hybrid of Mrs Nicoletis and Mrs Hubbard.