37. The Case of the Missing Will

Air date: 07/02/1993
Published: Eleventh story in "Poirot Investigates" (1924)

As I have remarked already, some of Agatha Christie's short stories were, indeed, short - and required considerable embellishment to bring them to the TV screen.

The Case of the Missing Will is, perhaps, the most extreme example of this to date, with the result that the end production is scarcely recognisable from the original.

This is an interesting issue, given how the series was first launched on a platform of being very faithful to the author's original work. If a story is simply too short, or too bare, what should the producers have done? Left it alone? The only alternative was to stretch the notion of 'adaptation' as far as it will go.

In the original book Hastings narrates a curious little tale. A Miss Violet Marsh, an orphan, approaches Poirot for help. Her uncle Andrew, who, having returned from making his fortune in farming in Australia, had acted as her guardian after her parents had died. However, he had not approved of her pursuing an education.

Upon his death, his will had revealed that Violet had a year to prove herself - or else his fortune will go to various charities. Poirot deduces that another will has been hidden in his home as a test. Although nothing appears to surface, he eventually deduces an elaborate plan with invisible ink on an envelope, which duly reveals the will that gives Violet the fortune.

The TV adaptation picks up Andrew's farming fortune in Australia, and his antipathy toward women pursuing academia - but that's about it.

The story begins on New Year's Eve, 1925, when Andrew announces to a group of friends how his newly written will is to divide up his fortune.

Cut to ten years later, and he is debating the place of women at a Cambridge debating society with Robert Siddoway, son of his lawyer. Violet (Wilson, not Marsh, for some reason) is present, along with Miss Campion, head of a female college at Cambridge.

At a house-party at his home, Andrew reveals to Poirot that he is about to change his will - and leave everything to Violet, who he says he is very proud of. That night, he is lured to a folly in the grounds and killed with an overdose injection of insulin.

The housekeeper, Mrs Marsh, is married to a local police sergeant, who seems reluctant to investigate the case after the family doctor declares the death to have been heart failure. This gives the excuse for Poirot to call in the services of Japp. When the family gather to hear the reading of the old, familiar will (which would have left most of the estate to the doctor's medical centre) the will has gone missing.

Fingers appear to point in various directions, particularly after an accident reveals that Miss Campion has, in fact, had a child in the past by caesarian section. The child was, of course, Violet - the father was Andrew. Poirot concludes that the lawyer's wife had killed Andrew, in an attempt to ensure that his fortune went to her son Robert.

It's a spirited, if somewhat convoluted tale - and quite some distance from the rather tame original.