Murder Ahoy (1964) – Nostalgia Central

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72-year-old Margaret Rutherford starred as the formidable amateur detective Miss Jane Marple for the fourth time in Murder Ahoy.

The screenplay was not based on any published Agatha Christie story but borrowed a few obscure plot details from They Do It With Mirrors and paid homage to Christie’s long-running play, The Mousetrap.

This time around, Miss Marple is a trustee to the cadet training ship HMS Battledore – run by the Cape of Good Hope Youth Reclamation Trust – where young hooligans are “reclaimed”.

At her first trustee meeting, one of her fellow trustees – Cecil Ffolly Hardwicke (Henry B. Longhurst) – dies just as he is about to make an important statement. Everyone agrees he died from natural causes except for Miss Marple, who suspects murder.

She visits the ship and stays the night, during which one of the officers – Lieutenant Compton (Francis Matthews) – is run through with a sabre and hanged from the yard arm.

The assistant matron (Norma Foster) is then found dead from snake venom beside a heap of jewellery stolen by some of the boys from a nearby mansion.

With the aid of her friend Mr Stringer (Stringer Davis), Miss Marple lays a trap and catches the real criminal, Commander Breeze-Connington (William Mervyn), the administration officer of the Battledore, who has been fiddling the accounts for 20 years, crazily believing that the money is due to him as an admiral.

The investigating police officers are played with farcical resignation by Charles Tingwell and Terence Edmond (who had just been “killed off” in Z Cars), and Lionel Jeffries – as the ship’s commanding officer – sacrifices the red herring of suspicion to his undoubted flair for comedy.

Small contributions to the comedy are made by Nicholas Parsons as a very brisk doctor, Derek Nimmo as a junior officer, and Miles Malleson as a bishop.

The (fictional) novel central to the plot – The Doom Box by J. Plantagenet Corby – was devised by the scriptwriters, and the prop makers made up copies in hardback (for HMS Battledore) and paperback (for Miss Marple). The publishing imprint is shown to be ‘Pigeon Books’ (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Penguin imprint).

The forward end of the Battledore was an actual cadet training vessel afloat at Greenhithe, while the aft end – consisting of the quarter deck, poop deck and deckhouse wardroom – was built on one of the stages at MGM’s British studios at Borehamwood, along with the captain’s cabin, library, sick bay, corridors and entrances to holds.

Location shooting took place in Uxbridge and Amersham, Buckinghamshire (which doubled as Milchester), and St Mawes in Cornwall.

Murder Ahoy was shelved upon completion for over a year before finally being released in October 1965 as the bottom half of a double bill with The Sandpiper.

Agatha Christie disliked all the films in which Margaret Rutherford played Miss Marple, but she allegedly particularly loathed this one.

Miss Jane Marple
Margaret Rutherford
Captain Sydney De Courcy Rhumstone
Lionel Jeffries
Chief Inspector Craddock
Charles Tingwell
Detective Sgt. Bacon
Terence Edmond
Commander Breeze-Connington
William Mervyn
Matron Alice Fanbraid
Joan Benham
Asst. Matron Shirley Boston
Norma Foster
Mr Jim Stringer
Stringer Davis
Dr Crump
Nicholas Parsons
Bishop Faulkner
Miles Malleson
Lord Rudkin
Henry Oscar
Sub-Lt. Eric Humbert
Derek Nimmo
Brewer (Lt. Commander Dimchurch)
Gerald Cross
Lt. Compton
Francis Matthews
Millie
Lucy Griffiths
Dusty Miller
Bernard Adams
Kelly the Tramp
Tony Quinn
Miss Pringle
Edna Petrie
Petty Officer Lamb
Roy Holder
Cecil Ffolly Hardwicke
Henry B. Longhurst
Sir Geoffrey Bucknose
Desmond Roberts
Police Sergeant
Ivor Salter
Police Constable
Billy Dean