In the novel Murder is Easy, Miss Lavinia Pinkerton was an elderly spinster from Wychwood under Ashe. She encountered Luke Fitzwilliam onboard a train. She told him that there was a murderer in her village, and that the murderer was probably going to kill John Humbleby. Before she can tell Scotland Yard, she is run over by a car. Fitzwilliam was astonished when he read that Dr Humbleby had died.
She had a Persian cat named Wonky Pooh.
Contents
Portrayals
Murder is Easy (1982 film)
In the 1982 film adaptation, Lavinia Pinkerton is renamed Lavinia Fullerton. The character is portrayed by actress Helen Hayes, who would later play Miss Marple in a number of adaptations.
Agatha Christie's Marple
in the 2008 ITV adaptation, Lavinia Pinkerton is portrayed by Sylvia Syms. She is one of the few characters whose backstory and role in the plot is fairly similar to the original novel. Here she meets Miss Marple instead of Luke Fitzwilliam on the train to London and died not in a traffic collision but after being pushed and falling down the escalator in a tube station. In this adaptation, Lavinia and Honoria Wynflete are best friends and it appears they share a house together. In a flashback during the denouement, Lavinia is seen telling her cat Wonky Pooh about her suspicions that the deaths in the village were murders. Honoria is shown overhearing this. The inscription on Lavinia's tombstone gives her full name as "Lavinia Enid Pinkerton", aged 73 and her date of death as 25 April 1955.
Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie
In Un meurtre est-il facile?, the France Télévisions and Escazal Films adaptation of the novel, the parallel character is named Josiane Lallin.
