A Pocket Full of Rye (2)

Part two picks up with the body count still climbing. Another murder has happened, and this time Miss Marple does not need the tea leaves to tell her what is going on. The connection to 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' is all too clear to her, and so is the identity of the next victim, which makes the question of the hour a simple one: can she get to them in time? She does not need to be told twice; the pattern is there in the rhyme, if only anyone else would read it properly.

She sets off at once for Yew Tree Lodge. There is something quietly alarming about Miss Marple in a hurry; the whole pleasure of her usual method is that she never seems to be rushing, and when she does, you know the rhyme is about to catch up with somebody. She is never theatrical about it, which is what makes the urgency so convincing.

The household is the same collection of suspects from part one, all watching each other behind the blinds: Adele Fortescue (Stacy Dorning), Miss Henderson (Fabia Drake), Mary Dove (Selina Cadell), Percival (Clive Merrison), Jennifer (Rachel Bell), Lance (Peter Davison), Patricia (Frances Low), Vivian Dubois (Martyn Stanbridge), and Mrs. Crump, played by Merelina Kendall. T.R. Bowen and Agatha Christie share the writing credit, Guy Slater directed, and the episode went out on 8 March 1985, the day after its predecessor.

What makes this second part work is watching Marple operate from knowledge the rest of the room does not have yet. The rhyme has told her what is coming, and now the race is between her timing and the killer's. Everyone else is still catching up, comparing notes and getting nowhere. The house is the same one from part one, but the mood has changed; every conversation has an edge, and Marple listens to what people do not say.

It's a tight, satisfying finish, and the nursery rhyme structure gives the whole story a shape most detective stories would kill for.