Ethel Lina White's The Lady Vanishes
Several movies made of this book, including by Hitchcock as well as dramatised for radio on several occasions.
Plot:
In Bandrika, a fictional country in an "uncivilised" region of immediately pre-World War II Central Europe, a motley group of travellers eager to return to England is delayed by an avalanche that has blocked the railway tracks. Among the train's passengers are Gilbert, a young musicologist who has been studying the folk songs of the region, Iris, a young woman of independent means who has spent a holiday with some friends, but is now returning home to get married, and Miss Froy, an elderly lady who has worked some years abroad as a governess.
When the train resumes its journey, Iris and Miss Froy become acquainted, while the remaining passengers in the compartment appear not to understand a word of English. Iris lapses into unconsciousness, the result of an earlier encounter with a falling flowerpot meant for Miss Froy. When Iris reawakens, the governess has vanished, and she is shocked to learn that the other passengers claim Miss Froy never existed. The other English travelers deny ever seeing her, for their own reasons.
Fellow passenger Doctor Egon Hartz convinces everyone that she must be hallucinating due to her accident. Undaunted, Iris starts to investigate, joined only by a skeptical Gilbert, with whom she eventually falls in love. They discover that Miss Froy is being held prisoner in a sealed-off compartment supposedly occupied by a seriously ill patient being transported to an operation. They manage to free her, but the train is diverted to a side track, where a shootout ensues. Miss Froy intimates to Gilbert and Iris that she is in fact a British spy assigned to deliver some vital information to the Foreign Office in London; after entrusting her message, encoded in a folk song – sung earlier by a balladeer, who is strangled in the first violence of the film – to Gilbert, she flees under cover of the shootout.
After managing to restart the train and escape, Gilbert and Iris return to London. At the Foreign Office, Gilbert, driven to joyful distraction when Iris accepts his marriage proposal, forgets the tune. Just as it appears the message has been lost, the coded folk song is heard in the background. Fortunately, Miss Froy has also made good her escape and is seen playing the song on a piano.
broadcast on BBC Radio 2
date: 17/Mar/2006 to 28/Apr/2006
Neville Teller - adaptation
Brenda Blethyn - narrator
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