Agatha Christie Wiki
Advertisement

In Pension Vanilos, the French Télévisions film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Hickory Dickory Dock, for the Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie TV series, Mary Patterson is a drug mule who was arrested early in the episode by commissaire Laurence. She was convinced by Laurence to help set up a sting for him to arrest her contact in Lille. However, during the rendezvous at a railway level crossing, Mary took advantage of an approaching train to jump across the track and make her escape. Her contact was on the other side and shot her before driving away. Laurence managed to get Mary to a hospital but she was later murdered by someone disguised as a doctor. With her murder, commissaire Laurence lost his link to the drug smuggling network in Lille. But Marlène Leroy later told Laurence that she remembered seeing Mary outside the Pension Vanilos, the student hostel run by her elder sister Solange Vanilos. This was also confirmed by Kuang Jia, a cleaning lady working at the hostel. Mary had been strangled with a stethoscope and coincidentally, a stethoscope had been among the items stolen from the hostel.

There is no parallel of Mary Patterson in the original Christie novel. The character of Mary Patterson is played by Nancy Tate.

Advertisement