4:50 p.m. from Paddington (novel)
4:50 p.m. from Paddington (original title 4.50 from Paddington ) is the 49th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It was first published in the UK on November 4, 1957 at the Collins Crime Club, and in the same month in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company under the title What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! In 1960 Scherz Verlag published the German edition in a translation by K. Hellwig. In 2000 a new edition was published under the same title with the translation by Ulrich Blumenbach, which is still used today.
Miss Marple is investigating her seventh case.
action
During a train ride, Mrs. McGillicuddy observes the murder of a woman in the window of an overtaking train. She tells her friend Miss Marple the story and she notifies the St. Mary Mead Police Department and the officer assures them that it will be investigated. But when neither a corpse nor traces of a fight are found, nobody pays any more attention to the story.
So Miss Marple and her friend set out and take the same train ride as the day before. Miss Marple becomes aware of a property near the railway station and hires an acquaintance, the housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow, to be employed on the property to investigate. Miss Marple takes up residence near the property in Brackhampton to be kept informed by Lucy.
At Rutherford Hall, Lucy meets the two permanent residents of the property, the spiteful and avaricious Patriarch Luther Crackenthorpe and his daughter Emma. Because it's vacation time, Luther's grandson Alexander and his school friend James Stoddart-West are also visiting. Alexander's father, the widowed World War II pilot Bryan Eastley, and Crackenthorpe's doctor, Dr. Quimper, are often present.
Every free afternoon Miss Eyelesbarrow combs the property under the pretext of playing golf. She finds the remains of a fur coat and a powder compact, which prove that the murdered woman was actually thrown off the train at this point. When Lucy then finds a woman's body in a sarcophagus in a barn, the police are called in again. Likewise, the other family members, Luther's unequal sons - the easy-going painter Cedric, the calculating financier Harold and the semi-criminal Alfred - now also come to Rutherford Hall.
It turns out that some time before the murder, Emma Crackenthorpe received a letter from a certain Martine who claimed to be the wife of her brother Edmund, who died in the war, and to have a son with him. This son would not only be entitled to part of the Crackenthorpe property, but would also be the sole heir of the property as the son of the firstborn. It is believed that the dead woman could be Martine and that one of Emma's brothers killed her out of greed.
Now Alfred and Harold Crackenthorpe are poisoned one after the other with arsenic. Miss Marple invites herself and Mrs. McGillicuddy to the Crackenthorpes' house to convict the murderer. On the train, Mrs. McGillicuddy only saw the killer from behind, but when Miss Marple, who already has correct suspicions, got the killer to put her hands around her neck (under the pretext that she had swallowed a fishbone) , Mrs. McGillicuddy, who is faced with a situation similar to the one on the train, spontaneously exclaims that this is the killer. Miss Marple explains to the man that he was seen doing his act, and he sees himself through and confesses to the murders. To everyone's surprise, the perpetrator was Dr. Quimper, who wanted to marry Emma Crackenthorpe in order to get her inheritance. The murdered woman on the train was his wife Anna Stravinska, from whom he lived separately. She was Catholic and therefore did not want to consent to the divorce.
people
- Miss Marple, the amateur detective
- Lucy Eyelesbarrow, her assistant
- Dermot Craddock, Scotland Yard inspector
- Bacon, Brackhampton Police Inspector
- Luther Crackenthorpe, owner of Rutherford Hall
- Emma Crackenthorpe, his daughter
- Cedric Crackenthorpe, his son
- Alfred Crackenthorpe, his son
- Harold Crackenthorpe, his son
- Bryan Eastley, his son-in-law
- Alexander Eastley, son of Bryan
- James Stoddard-West, a friend of Alexander
- Lady Stoddard-West, mother of James
- Anna Stravinska, a revue dancer
- Elspeth McGillicuddy, a friend of Miss Marple
- Doctor Quimper, the Crackenthorpes family doctor
- Frank Cornish, sergeant in the St. Mary Mead Police Station
- Mrs. Kidder, housekeeper at Rutherford Hall
- Hillman, gardener at Rutherford Hall
Film adaptations
Murder She Said
The novel was filmed in 1961 under the title Murder She Said (German title: 4:50 p.m. from Paddington ) with Margaret Rutherford in the lead role as Miss Marple under the direction of George Pollock .
Miss Marple (TV series)
For the BBC television series Agatha Christie's Miss Marple , the novel was filmed in 1987 with Joan Hickson in the leading role.
Agatha Christie's Marple
In 2004 it was made into a film again and aired in the first season of the ITV television series Agatha Christie's Marple with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple.
Major expenses
- 1957: Collins Crime Club (London), November 4th 1957
- 1957: Dodd Mead and Company (New York), November 1957
- 1960: German first edition, Scherz-Verlag, translated by Karl Hellwig
- 2000: New edition in translation by Ulrich Blumenbach
Audio books
- 1994/2003: 4:50 p.m. from Paddington (6 compact cassettes or 5 CDs). Complete reading. Speaker: Yvonne Frey. Translation from English by Karl Hellwig. Publishing house and studio for audio book productions (Beltershausen)
- 2003: 4:50 p.m. from Paddington (2 audio cassettes). Read by Beate Himmelstoss. Directed by Caroline Neven du Mont. Translated from the English by Dinka Mrkowatschki. The Hörverlag (Munich)
- 2013: 4:50 p.m. from Paddington (1 MP3 CD). Read by Katharina Thalbach. Translated from the English by Ulrich Blumenbach. The Hörverlag (Munich)
Web links
- 4.50 from Paddington on the official Agatha Christie website
- Murder she said (1961) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- 4.50 from Paddington (1987) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- 4:50 from Paddington (2004) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15.)
- ↑ John Cooper and BA Pyke. Detective Fiction - the collector's guide : Second Edition (Pages 82 and 87) Scholar Press, 1994, ISBN 0-85967-991-8 .
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ a b New translation in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ Audio book (complete 1994) in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library
- ^ Audiobook (complete 2013) in the catalog of the German National Library