Murder Ahoy – 1964 | 93 mins | Crime, Thriller | B&W

Plot Synopsis

The last of MGM’s quartet of Miss Marple thrillers features Margaret Rutherford tripping delightfully through a series of red herrings with a naval flavour to solve a murder onboard a youth organization training ship. Murder Ahoy is the only one not adapted from an Agatha Christie story and instead was based on an original screenplay by David Pursall and Jack Seddon. A number of then-familiar television faces – William Mervyn, Joan Benham and Derek Nimmo among them – decorate the mayhem, but even Lionel Jeffries, as a gruff-taking seadog, is no match for Rutherford, who deservedly dominates the film.

Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford) is present at the death of Cecil Ffolly-Hardwicke (Henry Longhurst), one of her fellow trustees of a fund which rehabilitates young criminals. The police write the death off as "natural causes" but Ffolly had been desperate to reveal some important information during a meeting, and Miss Marple suspects foul play. To investigate she goes aboard the ship used to train the juveniles, much to the distress of Captain Rhumstone (Lionel Jeffries).

Whilst Miss Marple is nosing around aboard ship she leaves her erstwhile plutonic friend Mr Stringer (Stringer Davis) ashore where he observes some of the young naval recruits robbing a house in the style of experienced criminals. Miss Marple suspects that one of the officers are playing Fagin to the group of unlikely lads and schooling the boys in house-breaking. When Compton (Francis Matthews) is found hanged and a matron is discovered poisoned, Miss Marple uncovers records that reveal Commander Breeze-Connington (William Mervyn), another trustee, has been siphoning off funds from the charitable organization and has killed the other two in order to keep them quiet. Miss Marple confronts Breeze-Connington, a man bitter at having been overlooked for promotion, and an amusing sword duel between the two ensues.