Miss Marple at an Italian finishing school with Americans Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline "Carrie" Louise Serrocold. While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is mentioned in "At Bertram's Hotel", where it is said she visited the hotel when she was fourteen and almost sixty years have passed since then. Excluding "Sleeping Murder", 41 years passed between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's nephew: in "The Murder at the Vicarage", the Reverend Clement's nephew Dennis is a teenager; in "The Mirror Crack'd
4.50 from Paddington to Death" with a cover illustration by Maxine McCaffrey. The book was made into a 1961 movie starring Margaret Rutherford in the first of her four appearances as Miss Marple. It was the first Miss Marple film. The BBC broadly follows the original plot with its 1987 version, starring Joan Hickson, who had appeared in the Rutherford film as Mrs Kidder. There are several changes: ITV adapted the novel for the series "Marple" in 2004 starring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple, with the title "What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw!" used when it was shown in the US. The adaptation contains several