Greenshaw

Last night we watched what we thought was the Julia McKenzie version of the Agatha short story 'Greenshaw's Folly'. With the 25 pages of the story expanded to 90 minutes (net, after deduction of advertisements) on the television. What we had thought was a case of Miss. Marple being intruded for commercial reasons into a story in which she had not actually appeared.

And rounded off the evening by reading the short story, which we happened to have. I was intrigued to find that while the core of the short story - the murder of an eccentric spinster living in a large house, with just three suspects, all with alibis - was retained in the adaptation, large dollops of story had been conjured up. And surprised to find that Miss. Marple and her novelist nephew actually did turn up; not an intrusion at all.

So in the adaptation, we had three murders, rather than one.

We had a grandfather who dabbled in chemistry and who used children from the local orphanage to test his efforts at a polo vaccine - presumably very much a live issue when the story was first written in the 1950's - with often untoward, not to say fatal results. We had a Father Brophy who now minded the orphanage, an alcoholic into petty theft to fund his habit.

The secretarial blonde acquired a violent husband, all too likely to search her out for another beating.

The eccentric spinster was shown as brewing up her own atropine from deadly nightshade to use as an eye salve. Later used to drug her in preparation for her murder.

We had a cute child, promoted to centre stage on television from footnote in the story as the son of the secretarial blonde. A cute child whom I believe I have seen in other adaptions of this sort. He must specialise.

While various bits of Agatha colour in the story got lost in the adaptation.

Sprigged print dresses. BH knows all about them, apparently light summer dresses printed with lots of sprigs, as in small leafy twigs.

'Paul and Virginie' in the library. A book which I own in the form of a miniature edition from 1892, complete with a selection of engravings. Probably much the same as a less miniature edition from the same year, now in Polesden Lacey. With Bing turning up both Polesden Lacey and the engraving above. A best selling story, a tragic romance, set in Mauritius, well known to a mental nurse from those parts whom I got to know in TB.

A horse-coper. Derogatory term for the handsome husband of the late sister of the eccentric spinster. But according to OED once current in the sense of someone who looked after horses. The father of a possible nephew of said spinster.

Various social class related asides were dropped, presumably not thought to be of interest to a modern audience. And the gay literary journalist who liked to have maids with white caps and streamers was morphed into a murder victim.

Eventually, with the help of IDMB (reference 2), I learn that the television adaptation that we saw was crafted from two short stories, 'Greenshaw's Folly' and 'The Thumb Mark of St. Peter', rather than just the one. Sadly, we don't have the second, so I can't check, but I imagine that it is the source for much of the apparently extraneous material noted above.

PS: a final digression being the fact that the eccentric spinster was played by Fiona Shaw, whom we remember as having seen a couple of times in a derelict music hall - Wilton's - in east London, in the course of her touring recitation of Eliot's 'The Wasteland'. Oddly enough, despite rarely reading poetry, even more rarely anything other than Shakespeare, I have recently taken to dipping in a 1932 copy of some of Eliot's poems. Strangely fascinating, despite not understanding much of what he is on about. A book which opens with 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. While according to Bing, the touring recitation took place around 2010, well after the start of the first volume of this blog in 2006, but I can find no notice of it, the best I could do being an allusion to our visit to Wilton (very properly in Wilt-shire) to see the curious Italianate church there, a rather grander version of the one by the Thames at Kingston. All very odd.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio.

Reference 2: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2166492/.

Reference 3: https://wiltons.org.uk/. No longer derelict, back up and running in a more regular fashion.