So the killer was calling from inside the house… Scroll down for the victims, the murderer, the blackmailer(s), the connivers and the conspirators. I’ve bolded the key information if you just want to scan. (My review is here.)
There are three murders in the building: of Alicia Drake (which takes place well before our visit); fraudulent psychic Joyce Reynolds who is pushed off a balcony; and Dr Leslie Ferrier, who is found impaled on a decorative sword in the locked music room. If you believe in ghosts you might want to count a fourth, Rowena Drake, who’s ghostly daughter may have had something to do with her mother falling backwards over the balcony wall and into the churning canal far below. Or maybe she simply lost her balance and fell.
THE KILLER: ROWENA DRAKE
She murders Joyce Reynolds by her own hand, and threatens Dr Leslie Ferrier to make him kill himself, as she believes them to be blackmailing her. She is also responsible for her own daughter Alicia’s death, and tries to kill Poirot.
THE VICTIM: ALICIA DRAKE
Alicia is revealed by fake psychic Joyce Reynolds during the séance to have been murdered. Though Rowena is responsible, housekeeper Olga Seminoff is an unwitting participant. Rowena is distraught at the thought of losing Alicia to her fiancé Maxime Gerard, whom she detests. Maxime has ended the engagement because of the overbearing Rowena, but later changes his mind, only for Rowena to refuse to let him see her daughter. Alicia seems to have a breakdown, hallucinating ghosts and eventually throwing herself from her balcony into the canal. In actual fact Rowena has been drugging her with poisonous honey made by their own bees from the rhododendrons Rowena planted after pulling up their previous wildflower garden.
The drugs are only meant to be enough to keep Alicia bedbound, but one night Olga offers to watch Alicia while Rowena rests; Alicia wakes up and Olga, not knowing about the poisoned honey, adds too much to Alicia’s tea. Alicia dies in her sleep, with Rowena finding her daughter’s body. She uses a pronged tool to scratch Alicia’s body in accordance with the legend of the murderous ghostly children haunting the palazzo — the mark of the children’s vendetta — then throws the body over the balcony and pretends Alicia has killed herself. The policeman retrieving the body from the water is actually Poirot’s bodyguard Portfoglio. The next day he leaves the force.
(After the attempt on his life, Poirot is given some of the same honey in the tea Ariadne makes for him — she finds it in the linen closet, where Olga left it after Alicia’s death. Poirot then hallucinates the dead.)
THE CONSPIRATORS: ARIADNE OLIVER, VITALE PORTFOGLIO & JOYCE REYNOLDS
Ariadne and Portfoglio work together to bring Joyce to the palazzo. The information Portfoglio has about the circumstances around Alicia’s death, and the palazzo, mean Joyce can send a baity letter to Rowena then reel her in during the séance. Ariadne also sends the unsigned note to Maxime inviting him to the palazzo, knowing he will come. Ariadne’s motive for doing this is to flummox Poirot, and then write a book about it, ending her run of flops and sending her literary star once more into the ascendant. Portfoglio, whose job has been to keep people away from Poirot, lets Ariadne in to see him so she can persuade Poirot to come to the séance. (The note she sends to Maxime — “BE AT THE PALAZZO 10PM. IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT ALICIA DRAKE” actually jolts Poirot into realising Ariadne and Portfoglio have been working together. With an actual apple on the table as he examines Maxime’s note, the letters spelling out APPLE jump out at him; Ariadne had brought Poirot with an apple when she burst into his calm breakfast, and he knew instantly it would be her: “the authoress”, as she eats “apples only ’til supper”.)
THE VICTIM: FAKE MEDIUM JOYCE REYNOLDS
Since Alicia’s death, Rowena has been blackmailed by someone who knew she had killed Alicia, which is why she has had no money to repair the crumbling palazzo. Rowena wrongly thinks the blackmailers are Leslie Ferrier and Joyce Reynolds, hence her murders of both of them. She kills Joyce first, though initially mistakes Poirot for Joyce (he is wearing Joyce’s cloak and mask, and bobbing for apples when she attacks him). Rowena whacks Poirot on the back of the head with her scratchy prongs, then realises it was him, and leaves to hunt down Joyce, who she pushes off the balcony.
THE VICTIM: DR LESLIE FERRIER
Later Rowena kills Leslie Ferrier, though she tries to implicate Poirot by locking Ferrier in the sound-proofed music room and giving Poirot the only key. She doesn’t kill Ferrier herself — rather she calls him on the internal house telephone (the external line is down because of the storm) — and instructs him to impale himself on a sword in the room or she will kill Leopold (she confesses her crimes to him over the phone, so Ferrier knows she is serious about killing Leopold). Ferrier does as he is told. When the body is found, Rowena tries to pin it on the Children’s Vendetta, a curse on doctors and nurses who came into the house and are killed by the ghostly plague children, who had been abandoned by their own doctors and nurses. (Joyce had also been a nurse, in the war.)
THE BLACKMAILER: YOUNG LEOPOLD FERRIER
As for the blackmailers, there is only one: Leslie’s young son, Leopold Ferrier. His father misses the information in his own medical notes pointing to Alicia’s poisoning — his PTSD and also his unrequited love for Rowena see to that — but Leopold reads the notes and works it out. Alicia had been poisoned with rhododendron honey, an idea Rowena got from Mozart’s opera about Mithridates, the “poison king”. Rowena’s first starring role was in that opera, and Leopold finds a book in her library explaining it all.
Poirot works out that Leopold is the blackmailer though he tells Leopold at the very end of the film that he should not blame himself. Leopold claims he only blackmailed Rowena for money for their bills as his father could no longer work; he still has the excess, which Poirot suggests he give to the Holland siblings so they can travel to Missouri, their dream. Olga and her husband take Leopold in, promising he will have more sunshine.
THE DENOUEMENT
After Ferrier’s murder, and Rowena’s attempt to implicate him in it, Poirot explains to everyone who the murderer is and how the killings were carried out. Rowena claims Alicia’s death was an accident, then runs from the room and up the winding staircase to the top the palazzo, where Poirot finds her on the balcony. The storm still rages. She admits she didn’t want Alicia to leave her. behind her, Hovering in mid-air, Poirot sees the ghost of Alicia. Rowena is suddenly grabbed by the ghost and pulled over the balcony wall, falling into the canal below.
The next morning, police take away the three bodies. Poirot agrees that Rowena’s death be reported as a suicide, and not to report Portfoglio for fraud.
Olga prepares to take Leopold home. Poirot tells him not to blame himself, and explains that he knows Leopold is the blackmailer. Leopold explains how he worked it out.
Outside, Olga tells the worried Holland siblings that she and Leopold can help them with passage to America; they all get in the boat to go home to Olga’s home. As Leopold prepares to leave in the boat with Olga, he states that Poirot may have solved the case but it was with help, meaning Alicia’s ghost. Leopold believes in the ghosts, seeing them regularly, saying “see you soon Dad”, as the boat chugs away.
Ariadne and Poirot are left by the palazzo. She refuses to apologise, saying she will have to redo the book. Poirot says she must not include him in it. Though she muses the building is just a house now, she also says he has the “look of the believer”, and has seen something. “I know only that we cannot hide from our ghosts” says Poirot, “whether they are real or not. We must make our peace with them and live life somehow”.
He returns to his home, opening the door and leaving it open. The young man from the start of the film, who wants Poirot’s help, follows him in and up to his rooftop where Poirot instantly gets into the new case, identifying a series of murders in the man’s family and alerting him to the danger he is now in.
Poirot sees a coffee cup placed on the very edge of his table and movies it to safety, an echo of Alicia’s teacup in her bedroom, which was also precariously on the edge of the table, crashing to the ground revealing her photo of Maxime. It is as if Poirot is telling Venice’s ghosts he will have no more truck with them; from now on it is just real life and ordinary murderers.
A Haunting In Venice is streaming on Disney Plus in the UK
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