*Percival Fortescue - Rex's older son, who was worried over the financier's erratic handling of the family business However, an investigation of Fortescue's financial holdings and family connections reveal the possibility of other motives, as the following list of suspects would attest:

Miss Marple informs Inspector Neele that she believes the three murders adhered to the nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence', which may have something to do with one of Rex Fortescue's old dealings - the Blackbird Mine in Kenya, over which he was suspected of having killed his partner, MacKenzie in order to swindle it from the latter's family. When Gladys and Adele's murders are reported in the media, Miss Marple pays a visit to the Fortescue home to learn what happened to Gladys. She was a maid named Gladys, who used to work for Jane Marple. On the same day, a third victim is found in the garden, all tangled in the clothesline and with a peg on her nose. However, Adele is murdered, while drinking tea laced with cyanide. Neele realizes that Fortescue may have been initially poisoned at home due to presence of yew trees at the latter's country home and the time it took for the poison to work.įortescue's second and much younger wife, Adele, becomes the main suspect, due to her affair with a golf instructor at a nearby resort named Vivian Dubois. Neele and his men discover rye grain in the dead man's pocket and that he had died from taxine, an alkaloid poison obtained from the leaves or berries of the yew tree.

After drinking his morning tea at his office, the businessman dies suddenly, attracting the attention of the police in the form of Inspector Neele. 'A POCKET FULL OF RYE' centered around the mysterious death of a London businessman named Rex Fortescue. Another television adaptation aired on ITV some twenty-four-and-a-half years later, starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. The novel was first adapted into a television movie in the mid-1980s, which starred Joan Hickson.

One of those mysteries was the 1953 novel, 'A Pocket Full of Rye'. As a fervent reader of Christie's novels, I must admit that I believe most of the best Jane Marple mysteries had been published during the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s. While the producers of 'AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT' seemed to regard the 1930s as the 'golden age' of Hercule Poirot mysteries, I get the feeling that the producers for both 'MISS MARPLE' and the recent 'AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MARPLE' regard the 1950s in a similar manner for those stories featuring Miss Jane Marple.

A pocket full of rye agatha christie