H.M.S. Rutherford

Murder Ahoy. "He was done away with through his nose," surmises Miss Marple, for the only clue that she has is the late Mr. ffolly-Hardwicke's empty snuffbox. She gets hold of a Slocum's Chemistry Set for Girls and is soon jowl-deep in strychnine, stabbings, a mousetrap baited with tincture of curare. Miss Marple, of course, is Britain's 72-year-old Margaret Rutherford, a jaunty old scout whose gross tonnage appears to be made up mostly of jettisoned seabags, each containing a secret formula for turning the scent of foul play into laughing gas.

Whenever her movie bosses have nothing better for her to do, they send Actress Rutherford another Miss Marpie script. In this film, she plays Agatha Christie's doughty heroine in name only, buoying up a nonsensical plot that plumps her down on a frigate used as a training ship for delinquent boys. To launch H.M.S. Rutherford on these shallow comedy seas is something like launching the Queen Mary into a goldfish pond. Nonetheless she makes an impressive splash, particularly in a climactic confrontation scene that finds her crossing swords with a homicidal maniac. "Won't be as easy as you think," she burbles stoutly. "I was ladies' fencing champion in 1931." Whereupon she lunges to the attack for a swashbuckling finish. It is insanely droll to see a hybrid of Sherlock Holmes and Tugboat Annie playing a role clearly cribbed from the repertory of Errol Flynn.

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