Jane Wilkinson, Lady Edgware is a main character from the 1933 mystery novel Lord Edgware Dies. In the novel, she is a talented young American actress and the estranged wife of the wealthy Lord Edgware.
Character[]
According to Poirot, her quality at acting depends on the role--if she was to be the centre of the play or film, she would play her part very well. However, she could not have played a minor character part adequately.
Bryan Martin told Poirot that Lady Edgware could kill someone quite cheerfully, despite the fact that she "did not have the brains for murder" and would be instantly caught. Poirot himself says she has "the brains of a rabbit": she does not know anything about history or geography, and "the name of the playwright Molière could suggest her a maison de couture".
She was described as having a "well known, slightly husky voice", and a "delightful husky laugh".
Background[]
Jane Wilkinson is a well-known American actress residing in London, having starred in several stage plays and films alongside Bryan Martin.
Three years prior to the main story, Jane married the wealthy George Alfred St Vincent Marsh, better known as Lord Edgware. Rumours said she left him shortly afterwards--indeed, they did not live in the same house.
Role in the story[]
One evening, Hastings and Poirot meet her, Bryan Martin, Carlotta Adams and Ronald Marsh in a theatre. After some background given to the reader by Poirot, Jane asks to talk with him in private. She tells him she needed to "get rid of her husband". She said she consulted several lawyers, but none of them could provide a solution to the problem. Poirot asks her about the reason of her wanting to divorce her husband, and that is, because she wanted to marry someone else. That was the Duke of Merton, to the surprise of Hastings who thought of him like a man whose life was austere in the extreme.
Some days later Lord Edgware was murdered. She was the prime suspect, and the secretary Miss Carroll sworn she saw Jane entering the study at 10 o'clock, and kept that version of the story even after Poirot proved she was on the staircase so she could not see her face properly. The newly hired butler Alton saw it as well, despite having seen her only once or twice.
On the night of Lord Edgware's murder, Jane claimed she was having dinner at Montagu Corner's. This was confirmed by Corner, Donald Ross, and several other guests, which removed her from the suspect list. The woman seen by Miss Carroll was Carlotta Adams in disguise, which was subsequently killed to avoid her revealing the identity of the person who hired her to frame Lady Edgware. This seems further confirmed by the fact that she never wore black, and the woman impersonating her was completely dressed in black.
She told the police that, when dining at Chiswick, she received a strange telephone call. The person speaking asked if she was Jane Wilkinson, does not say anything else after receiving the answer, and rings off. At a second dinner party, someone uttered something about "the judgement of Paris" and Jane replied with "Paris? Why, Paris doesn’t cut any ice nowadays. It’s London and New York that count". After that, Donald Ross rings Poirot up to tell him somehting about that and gets stabbed.
All the questions that tormented Poirot later were resolved. Afterall, it was indeed Jane who killed Lord Edgware, Carlotta and Donald Ross. The woman claiming to be her, the one which was seen by Alton and Miss Carroll, was indeed Jane. Carlotta goes to the dinner party disguised as Lady Edgware, without knowing what would have happened next. Before dying, she wrote a letter to her sister Lucie, in which she stated that the person who hired her to pose as Lady Edgware was Ronald Marsh. It later turns out that one page was taken, and a letter was torn out to change "she" to "he".
However, Donald Ross spotted the fake. The woman at the dinner at Chiswick knew a lot about Greek mythology, so it was impossible for the woman that was so informed about that be so ignorant about "the judgement of Paris" days later.
At the end of the novel, Hastings returns to the Argentine and receives a manuscript from the killer explaining the motive: divorcing Lord Edgware would have been of no use, because the Duke of Merton was a catholic.
Portrayals[]
- In the 1934 film adaptation, she was played by Jane Carr.
- In the 1985 film Thirteen at Dinner, she was played by Faye Dunaway, who also played Carlotta Adams.
- In the 1992 BBC Radio 4 adaptation, she was played by Nicola Pagett, who also played Carlotta Adams.
- Her part was played by Helen Grace in the 2000 ITV television adaptation of the novel which formed part of the series Agatha Christie's Poirot.