A Pocket Full of Rye (1)

The Fortescues are a banking family, and the family business this week appears to be dying. Members start passing away in quick succession, and Miss Marple, hearing the names, is put in mind of an old nursery rhyme, 'Sing a Song of Sixpence'. She vows to find the blackbird behind the crimes. A blackbird in a pie is a strange thing to be reminded of while the deaths are still being counted, and Miss Marple takes it seriously in the way she takes everything seriously: quietly, and without ever letting go.

It does not take the poison analysis long to give the plot its first shove. The substance that killed Rex Fortescue turns out to derive from yew, which is a neat trick and a pointed one, because the family seat is Yew Tree Lodge. Suspicion falls on everyone who lives behind those walls, staff included.

Timothy West plays Rex Fortescue with the right amount of bluster for a man about to be murdered, and around him the household is exactly the sort the BBC of this era cast so well: Fabia Drake as Miss Henderson, Stacy Dorning as Adele Fortescue, Clive Merrison as Percival, Rachel Bell as Jennifer, Peter Davison as Lance, Frances Low as Patricia, Martyn Stanbridge as Vivian Dubois and Selina Cadell as Mary Dove. Joan Hickson's Miss Marple watches the lot of them with her usual quiet attention. T.R. Bowen and Agatha Christie share the writing credit, Guy Slater directed, and the episode went out on 7 March 1985.

The fun of this first part is watching a closed household slowly realise that the danger is inside. The yew clue narrows the field, but nobody in a country house mystery ever believes the obvious suspect for long, and there are plenty of candidates to keep the tea trays busy. The episode enjoys letting them all pass before Marple's quiet eyes; she lets the house talk itself into trouble.

It's a solid start, the kind that makes you glad the second part is only a day away on the schedule.