The Grey Cells of Christie's Poirot: Hercule Poirot In "The Sketch"

By Michael Amadio

In addition to the novel length stories and one play, Hercule Poirot appeared in more than 50 short stories published starting in 1923 in “The Sketch,” a British illustrated weekly journal that ran between February 1, 1893 and June 17, 1959. “The Sketch” published 23 stories published in 1923. These early stories represent almost half of all the Poirot short stories written by Agatha Christie over the 50 plus years of the detective literary life. Later these stories were published in book form as part of the collections “Poirot’s Early Cases” and “Poirot Investigates,” sometimes with a different title. After an extensive illustrated introduction to Poirot and to the stories, this eBook presents in their chronological order of magazine publication, with the original magazine title and publication details.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Amadio
• Release date: Aug 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005079550

Michael Amadio

Michael Amadio has worked in a number of executive marketing positions and has been a professionalfree-lance translator for 30 years. He lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

THE GREY CELLS

OF CHRISTIE’S POIROT

HERCULE POIROT IN THE SKETCH

Introduction, cover, and layout © 2020 Michael Amadio

The Grey Cells of Mr. Poirot stories

edited, and formatted by Michael Amadio

All rights reserved

Published by Michael Amadio at Smashwords

This eBook is sold DRM-free and is licensed for personal use only.

This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

To share this eBook with others, please purchase additional copies.

Produced in the United States

The Grey Cells of Mr. Poirot is also available as a printed book

at online retailers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot

Portrayal of Hercule Poirot

Poirot’s Short Stories in The Sketch

I. THE AFFAIR AT THE VICTORY BALL

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

II. THE CURIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF THE OPALSEN PEARLS

I

II

III. THE ADVENTURES OF THE KING OF CLUBS

I

II

III

IV

V

IV. THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MR. DAVENHEIM

V. THE MYSTERY OF THE PLYMOUTH EXPRESS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE WESTERN STAR

I

II

III

VII. THE TRAGEDY AT MARSDON MANOR

VIII. THE KIDNAPPED PRIME MINISTER

I

II

III

IV

IX. THE MILLION DOLLAR BOND ROBBERY

I

II

X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CHEAP FLAT

I

II

III

XI. THE MYSTERY OF HUNTER’S LODGE

I

II

XII. THE CLUE OF THE CHOCOLATE BOX

XIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE EGYPTIAN TOMB

I

II

XIV. THE CASE OF THE VEILED LADY

I

II

III

IV

XV. THE KIDNAPPING OF JOHNNIE WAVERLY

XVI. THE MARKET BASING MYSTERY

I

II

XVII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ITALIAN NOBLEMAN

XVIII. THE CASE OF THE MISSING WILL

I

II

XIX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE CLAPHAM COOK

I

II

III

XX. THE LOST MINE

XXI. THE CORNISH MYSTERY

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

XXII. THE DOUBLE CLUE

XXIII. THE LEMESURIER INHERITANCE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

INTRODUCTION

Young Agatha Christie in 1925, five years after the publication of her first detective novel, the first to feature Hercule Poirot.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the name by which Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) is better known. She was an English mystery novel and short story writer, and playwright. Her enduring works include 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, especially those featuring the two recurring characters of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, a murder mystery, and six romance novels under the name of Mary Westmacott.

While young and before marrying she tended to the troops returning home in the First World War, those who were coming back from the trenches. Her initial attempts as a writer were unsuccessful and ended in rejections. However, that changed with the publication of her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Hercule Poirot. The knowledge of poisons acquired working as a pharmacy assistant during the World War features in this first and in many other of her novels.

Agatha Christie in the formal portrait commonly seen in her books.

According to the Guinness World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, with sales of about 2 billion copies, and, according to her estate, her works come third behind only those of Shakespeare and the Bible. Also, according to Index Translationum, she is the most-translated author. Her books have been translated into more than 100 languages, and her novel Then There Were None had sold 100 million copies by 2017, the best-selling mystery ever.

In the United States, Christie was the first recipient of the Grand Master Award, the highest honor of the Mystery Writers of America. In the same year, the Mystery Writers of America presented the Edgar Award for Best Play to Witness for the Prosecution.

Many of Christie's novels and short stories have been adapted for cinema and television. The first adaptation was the 1928 British film The Passing of Mr. Quin. Poirot made his first film appearance 1931 in Alibi, both were considered poor by Christie, but she felt differently about Murder on the Orient Express, the 1974 film directed by Sidney Lumet.

The television show Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013), with David Suchet in the title role, ran for thirteen series for a total of seventy episodes. The television series Miss Marple (1984–1992) adapted all twelve Marple novels.

Christie's works have been adapted also for radio, a video game series, and graphic novels.

Hercule Poirot

Hercule Poirot is a refugee from the German invasion of Belgium that brought Britain into World War I. As a ranking policeman in the city of Brussels, Poirot, at risk of being taken up and put in prison, moved to England where, while his country is in German hands, he occupies himself, and earns a living, by doing what he does best: solve crimes.

He shares lodgings with Captain Hastings, an ex-officer of the war who becomes his Watson, someone who carries a revolver in emergencies and acts as a sounding board, in a manner similar to Arthur Conan Doyle and many, if not all, the detectives of the time.

Hercule Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters. He appeared in 33 novels, one play (Black Coffee), and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.

Appearing in about 40% of all the detective novels written by Christie, Poirot is the recurring character featured most frequently by the author. By comparison, Miss Marple, the other world-famous character created by Christie, is featured in only 12 novels and 20 short stories, less than half the times as frequently as Hercule Poirot.

Poirot is the protagonist of the very first detective novel written by Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1921 in the UK. Poirot will return for a second novel in 1923 with The Murder on the Links. In between these two novels, Christie writes almost half of all Poirot’s short stories. These early stories were published in The Sketch, a British illustrated weekly journal that ran for 2,989 issues between February 1, 1893 and June 17, 1959. Between 1923 and 1924, Christie wrote 49 short stories for The Sketch, just under one third of all short stories she ever wrote. These short stories were later published as collections in book form.

Poirot’s first two novels and The Sketch that featured his first short stories.

Poirot’s descriptions in the books where he is featured allow to somehow visualize his looks and appearance. Here is Captain Arthur Hastings’s first description:

"He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.

The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police."

The limp is not mentioned in later books, perhaps it was a temporary injury (in Curtain, Poirot admits he was wounded when he first came to England).

And in The Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie describes Poirot with these words:

By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young French lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache. The small man being of course Hercule Poirot.

Poirot comes to life in 1921 with Christie’s first detective novel and dies in 1975 in the novel Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, a story that brings the detective back to Styles where it all began.

"Curtain" book cover.

Portrayal of Hercule Poirot

The portrayals for which the detective is best remembered are those of the actors who starred in the role of Poirot in the many radio, TV, and film adaptations. In printing, perhaps the first depiction of Poirot is on the first page of 13 For Dinner, as it appeared on March 1933 in the first of six installments that serialized in The American Magazine the novel published in the UK as Lord Edgware Dies . The novel was adapted to TV under both titles. In the first adaptation, a 1985 made-for-TV movie, Poirot was portrayed by Peter Ustinov. A second television adaptation was as an episode for the series Agatha Christie's Poirot, in the year 2000, with David Suchet in the role of the detective.

"The American Magazine with 13 For Dinner, a serialization of the novel Lord Edgware Dies, and David Suchet as Poirot in the TV adaption.

But the first actor to portray Hercule Poirot was Charles Laughton in the play Alibi, a stage adaptation of the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Alibi the play was later adapted to a film by the same title with Austin Trevor playing the character of Poirot. Trevor was the first actor to bring Hercule Poirot to the screen. He will be remembered as the first clean shaved Poirot. After Alibi, Trevor reprised the character in two additional films.

Charles Laughton as Poirot in the play Alibi and Austin Trevor in the movie.

After Alibi, Francis L. Sullivan, an English film and stage actor, and an alumni of the same public school attended by Charles Laughton, portrayed Poirot on stage twice, in Black Coffee and Peril at End House. In 1937 Sullivan played also Poirot on screen once in The Wasp’s Nest.

Francis L. Sullivan who played Poirot on stage twice and once on film.

Starting in 1939 and continuing in the 1940s and 1950s we find a number of radio adaptations and radio programs that featured the character of Poirot, even if some were not the adaptation of Christie’s stories.

Orson Wells and the Mercury Players dramatized Roger Ackroyd for radio in 1939 in Campbell Playhouse, a program of CBS. In 1942 Poirot was voiced by novelist and radio actor Maurice Tarplin in the radio adaptation of The Tragedy at Marsden Manor, as part of Murder Clinic, a Mutual radio series. In 1945 Harold Huber, a stage, film, radio and television American actor, played Poirot in a weekly radio series called The Adventures of Hercule Poirot. The Adventures consisted of half-hour episodes and was followed in 1946-1947 by a daily series of 15-minutes episodes called Mystery of the Week that used the character of Poirot, but were not based on Christie’s stories. The next adaptation came in 1955 in a radio production of Murder in the Mews in which Poirot was voiced by Richard Williams.

Voices of Poirot (L to R): Orson Wells, Harold Huber, and Maurice Tarplin.

Still in 1955 the West German TV adapted Murder on the Orient Express, starring Heini Göbel as Poirot. Murder on the Orient Express will be adapted to film several times again in more recent years. In 1962, in another TV adaptation, Martin Gabel played the role of Poirot in a production based on The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim.

It is in this time frame, in 1963 to be precise, that, in the episode Who Killed Supersleuth? of the program TV series Burke’s Law, Ed Begley, an American actor of theatre, radio, film, and television, plays a character named Bascule Doirot. This was followed by another Poirot parody with the sleuth played by Tony Randall in the film The Alphabet Murders, based on Agatha Christie’s novel The ABC Murders. Far from being a straightforward adaptation, the film was more of a satire greatly changed from the novel.

Poirot parodies (L to R): Ed Begley and Tony Randall.

In 1974, Murder on the Orient Express was adapted to film for the first time. In it, the character of Poirot is interpreted by Albert Finney, who, as of 2015, is the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot. In 2017 the novel was adapted for the second time under the direction of Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh who also plays the part of Hercule Poirot.

Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh as Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express.

Starting in 1978 with Death on the Nile, Peter Ustinov played Poirot six times in theatrical features and in made for television movies. These, however, were set in a more contemporary era that the novels which inspired them.

Not everyone was a fan of Ustinov as Poirot. In fact Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks has been said to observe: That's not Poirot! He isn't at all like that!

In 2020, Kenneth Branagh plays Poirot again in a new adaptation of Death on the Nile.

Peter Ustinov and Kenneth Branagh as Poirot in Death on the Nile.

So, who’s the best Poirot. The general consensus seems to be that the portrayal of the character closest to the Poirot of the novels is the one provided by the classically trained David Suchet who starred as Poirot in the television series Agatha Christie's Poirot. In over 25 years, the show run on ITV from 1989 until June 2013, the series included all Poirot’s novels and many short stories. Pointedly, the last episode was an adaptation of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, Poirot’s last novel.

.

David Suchet in the ITV series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

Poirot’s Short Stories in The Sketch

In addition to the 33 novel length stories and one play, Hercule Poirot appears in more than 50 short stories that were published, starting in 1923, in The Sketch, a British illustrated weekly journal that ran for 2,989 issues between February 1, 1893 and June 17, 1959.

April 25, 1923 issue of The Sketch.

In 1923, the Sketch published throughout the year, a series of Agatha Christie’s short stories featuring Hercule Poirot under the common title THE GREY CELLS OF M. POIROT (Tales with a Sting). The title refers to Poirot’s brain as he himself calls it (the little "grey cells), the grey matter that he uses to solve crimes. He listens to people talking, whether they are telling the truth or not, then tries to put the pieces together by thinking.

Under this banner of Grey Cells, The Sketch published 23 stories, almost half of all Poirot’s short stories ever written by Christie. Later on, the stories were reprinted in book form (sometimes with a different title) in two collections, Poirot Investigates (1924 in the UK and 1925 in the US) and Poirot’s Early Cases (1974 in the UK, and in the US with a slightly different title).)

This eBook collects all 23 stories published in 1923 in The Sketch. The publication details are provided at the beginning of each story. The stories are presented in chronological order of publication with their original magazine title.

1: The Affair at the Victory Ball

In this, the first of Poirot’s short stories, Chief Inspector Japp asks Poirot to assist Scotland Yard in the events of a recent costumed Victory Ball. A group of six people attend dressed in the costume of the Commedia dell’arte. The night starts badly with two of them not being on speaking terms. A third, the young head of the group, is found dead later on the floor of the dining room, stabbed with a table knife, his body strangely stiff, and is rumored fiancée is found dead in her bed from an overdose of cocaine, a drug to which she is found to be addicted.

The strength with which the knife was plunged into the body and the stiffness of the body will lead Poirot to the solution of the crime.

2: The Curious Disappearance of the Opalsen Pearls

Poirot and Hastings are staying at the Grand Metropolitan hotel in Brighton where they meet Mr. and Mrs. Opalsen. He is a rich stockbroker, and his wife collects jewelry. She offers to show Poirot her pearls, but when she goes to her room to get them, she finds that they have been stolen. Poirot is asked to help. When searching the maid rooms, the missing pearls are found under a mattress. The case appears to be over, but Poirot tells Hastings the newly found necklace is a fake. Also, the maids say they have never seen a small white card Poirot has found, and the investigation continues.

3: The Adventures of the King of Clubs

The Oglander family is playing bridge in the drawing room of their house when the French windows burst open and a woman enters on shaky legs and with blood on her dress. Before collapsing she says, Murder! A doctor and the police are called. At the next-door villa the police will find the body of Henry Reedburn, a theatrical impresario, dead in the library, his head bashed in by an unknown weapon. The woman is a famous dancer, whom Reedburn loved but was not reciprocated.

Poirot and Hastings visit the scene of the crime. They approach the Oglander home, along the garden path. In the drawing room, they find the undisturbed game table with the cards still in place. The dancer, ill in bed, tells them she was with Reedburn when a man attacked him. That’s when she fled from the house and burst into the Oglander drawing room. As they leave, Poirot notices that the king of clubs is missing from the cards on the bridge table. It is the clue that allow Poirot to solve the case.

This is one of the few cases (aside from Murder on the Orient Express) in which Poirot will let the guilty party go unpunished.

4: The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim

This is a case that Poirot solves on a dare. In a conversation with Hastings and Japp they discuss the disappearance of a banker, Mr. Davenheim, from his country house. Poirot makes a five-pound bet with Japp that he could solve the case within a week without moving from his chair.

Poirot has one question for Japp: Did Mr. and Mrs. Davenheim share a bedroom? When the answer is negative, Poirot knows what happened and predicts that Davenheim's bank will collapse, an event that will occur the next day, and Poirot reveals the truth. Japp will pay Poirot the five pounds he wagered.

5: The Mystery of the Plymouth Express

The body of a dead woman is discovered under a seat on the Plymouth express. The woman turns out to be the daughter of Ebenezer Halliday, an American steel magnate who asks Poirot to take the case.

When Mr. Halliday saw his daughter the last time. she was going to a house party carrying jewels, valued at almost one hundred thousand pounds, that she was planning to wear at the party. She travelled by train. When she was found, she had been chloroformed and stabbed, and the jewels were missing.

This short story was later expanded into The Mystery of the Blue Train, a novel with a similar plot, but with changed names and details.

6: The Adventure of ‘The Western Star’

Mary Marvell, the famous American film star, is on a visit to London to discuss the making of a film there. While in London she goes to Poirot to ask for assistance because she has received three letters asking her to return the Western Star, a diamond jewel that her husband bought for her three years earlier. The jewel, which comes from the left eye of an idol, has to be returned before the next full moon. In London, Mary is staying at the home of Lord and Lady Yardly who own an identical diamond, the Star of the East, which came from the right eye of the idol.

Poirot will reveal that there never were two jewels nor the there was a purchase of the Western Star. The story is all a fabrication of Mary’s husband who is persuaded to give the real diamond back.

7: The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor

A friend, the director of the Northern Union Insurance Company, asks Poirot to investigate the case of a man who died of an internal hemorrhage a few weeks after purchasing a fifty thousand pounds life insurance. Poirot and Hastings go to Marsdon Manor where the man was found dead with a rook rifle next to the body. They interview the widow, but cannot find anything wrong. However, in a further interview with the gardener, Poirot learns the story of someone who committed suicide with a rook rifle.

Poirot will figure out how this story is key to the perpetration of the crime.

8: The Kidnapped Prime Minister

WWI is almost over when the Prime Minister is kidnapped. The Leader of the House of Commons and a member of the War Cabinet enlist Poirot to help with the crisis brought about by the kidnapping. What follows is a complex investigation that demands that Poirot travels to France with other investigators involved in the case. But, once there, Poirot does not join in the search. He remains instead in his hotel room where he will spend several hours thinking.

Abruptly, he returns to England where the crime is solved.

9: The Million Dollar Bond Robbery

A million dollars of bonds have gone missing while in the custody of Philip Ridgeway, the nephew of the Bank general manager. Ridgeway fiancée asks for Poirot’s help in proving his innocence. Poirot meets Ridgeway to learn the facts of the case. Ridgeway was entrusted with the bonds by his uncle and another general manager of the Bank. The bonds were counted in Ridgeway's presence, then sealed in a packet placed in his locked portmanteau. A few hours before Ridgeway arrives in New York, the packet disappears. The ship is sealed and searched, but to no avail.

When Poirot meets again with Ridgeway, and his fiancée, he will explain the case to them. A false packet was what had had been placed in the portmanteau that the villain opened with a duplicate key. The villain took out and threw overboard the false bonds. The real bonds, in the meantime, were being sold in New York.

10: The Adventure of the Cheap Flat

Mrs. Robinson and her husband lease at an attractive price a flat in which she says they moved in. The porter, however, contradicts her saying the Robinsons have been there for six months. Poirot’s interest is picked and he decides to investigate. He rents another flat in the building and then learns of important American naval plans having been stolen by an Italian who gave them to a suspected spy who fled the United States under the assumed name of Robinson.

Poirot and Hastings will trick the spy into revealing where the plans are hidden, and Japp will arrests the spies.

11: The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge

Poirot and Hastings receive a visit from a Mr. Roger Havering who, while in London, has received a telegram from his wife telling him that his uncle was murdered and asking him to return at once with a detective. Hastings goes with Havering to the scene of the crime, the hunting lodge owned by the brother of Havering’s mother. As they arrive they find that Inspector Japp has been called and is already there. Hastings speaks with the housekeeper who tells him of the events, a story that is later confirmed. Japp, meantime, confirms the presence of Havering in London, and thus his alibi. Hastings wires Poirot what he has learned. Once Hastings is back in London, Poirot explains his theory, but Japp, though convinced, cannot make an arrest for lack of evidence. It is fate that provides justice as the culprits are killed in an airplane crash.

12: The Clue of the Chocolate Box

Poirot tells Hastings of the one occasion when he failed to solve a crime. Years earlier, when he was a police detective in Brussels, Paul Déroulard, a French Deputy, had died from heart failure. A cousin of the deputy’s late wife is convinced the death is not natural and ask Poirot to investigate. Poirot interviews the servants about the food that was served the night Déroulard died suspecting that a poison may have been involved, but everybody was served from common plates. In the study where the death took place, Poirot observes an open box of chocolates that is still full and untouched. Poirot learns that Déroulard was in the habit of eating some chocolates every night after dinner, and that he had finished a box the night of his death. Usually, the servant retrieves the empty box and replaces it. The presence of the new open box becomes a clue that allows Poirot to solve the case, or so he believes.

Poirot thinks he has solved the case only to learn, in speaking with Déroulard’s mother, how wrong he had been.

13: "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb

Lady Willard, the widow of Sir John Willard, famous Egyptologist and archaeologist who excavated the tomb of Pharaoh Men-her-Ra, consults with Poirot when her husband and others all die in a short period of time, and the press is full of stories of an Egyptian curse. Lady Willard's son has now gone to Egypt to continue his father's work and she fears he will die next.

Poirot and Hastings go to Egypt and when they get there they find another death in the party, and Poirot investigates the dig.

14: "The Case of the Veiled Lady

The criminals of England are so afraid of him, in his own opinion, that Poirot has no cases at the moment. Hastings tells him of a recent jewelry theft from a shop in Bond Street in which the perpetrator was immediately arrested, but only paste copies of the six stolen stones were found on him. The real jewels had already been passed on to an accomplice.

With the report of the robbery in the background, a heavily veiled lady arrives. She says she is engaged to the Duke of Southshire and is afraid that the coming to light of an indiscreet letter she wrote when she was sixteen would anger her fiancé. At age sixteen she wrote an indiscreet letter to a soldier. The letter is now in the possession of Mr. Lavington who he asking twenty thousand pounds in exchange for its return. Lavington keeps the letter in a Chinese puzzle box and, when he meets with Poirot, laughs at Poirot’s request to surrender the letter.

The next day, while Lavington is in Paris, Poirot goes to Lavington's residence pretending to be a man hired to secure the windows, but he actually sets up a window so that he can break in with Hastings and take the box.

The puzzle box has a hidden compartment that holds the jewels from the Bond Street robbery. The letter was a fake to use Poirot to retrieve the missing jewels.

15: The Kidnapping of Johnnie Waverly

Johnnie Waverly, the three year old son of Marcus Waverly, is kidnapped from his home and Poirot is called to investigate. Leading to the actual kidnapping, anonymous letters had threatened that the boy would be taken unless a payment of twenty-five thousand pounds was made. These letters raised little interest until the last one, which stated that the boy would be kidnapped exactly at twelve o'clock the next day. Afraid of an inside job, Marcus Waverly dismisses the house staff except for his butler and his wife's secretary-companion. At the appointed time, a distraction draws the police outside, while the child is kidnapped. After the boy is taken the village clock strikes twelve, as they realize that the house clock had been moved forward ten minutes.

Poirot goes to Waverly Court where, after questioning he butler, the secretary-companion of the wife, and the dismissed nurse of the boy, he concludes his investigation and reveals that the kidnapping was a setup, and the child had been and presently is with his former nurse.

16: The Market Basing Mystery

Poirot and Hastings join Japp for a weekend of rest on the countryside, in the small town of Market Basing. They are enjoying Sunday breakfast, when they are interrupted by the local constable with the news that Walter Protheroe, the owner of a local large mansion, has been found dead of apparent suicide. The three go to the scene and find the dead owner of the house shot through the head with his pistol in his right hand. The shot, however, is impossible, as the bullet had entered the head from behind the left ear. It was murder made look like suicide. There is no smell of smoke in the air and, at the inquest, a tramp testifies having heard Protheroe argue with someone the night of his death. These facts provide Poirot with clues to deduce what happened and solve the crime.

17: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman

Poirot, Hastings, and a visiting neighbor, Dr Hawker, are summoned for help by Count Foscatini, a client of the doctor. They rush to Foscatini's flat that they find locked, but that the building manager will open for them. Inside, they find the Count dead, his head crushed by a small statue. The body is alone but there is a table set for three, with the meals consumed. Poirot interviews the kitchen staff, showing interest in the meal served and especially the dessert that was not eaten. He also notes that after crying for help, the dying Count replaced the receiver on the phone.

Poirot will explain to Hastings how one of the Count’s companion at dinner is the killer. When the theory is passed on to Japp, the inspector investigates, and solution of the crime is proven correct.

18: The Case of the Missing Will

Miss Violet Marsh was orphaned at the age of fourteen and lived with her uncle Andrew. Her relation with the uncle was difficult but remains cordial. When the man dies, the will leaves the house to the niece, but with a strange clause: she will be left with nothing if within a year she cannot prove her wits.

There is however a second will, the existence of which is confirmed by the uncle housekeepers who witnessed both. There was a mistake in the first will and thus the uncle wrote the second.

Poirot and Miss Marsh are convinced that either the second will or a sum of money is hidden in the house, and Poirot agrees to look. Poirot and Hastings travel to Devon, where they meet with Mr and Mrs. Baker, Marsh's housekeepers. They tell Poirot that they signed and witnessed two wills, as Marsh said he had made a mistake with the first, but they did not see its contents. After an unsuccessful search of house, when he is ready to give up, Poirot remembers something, and goes back to the house where he finds the second will that leaves everything to the niece without any clause.

19: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

Hastings bring to the attention of Poirot cases that appear in newspapers, in particular the case of a bank clerk who vanishes with fifty thousand pounds of securities, the case of a suicidal man, and the case of a missing typist, but Poirot does not show any interest in them. However he takes on the seemingly trivial case of Mrs. Todd who asks him to investigate her missing cook.

As usual, Poirot will question the maid and the other occupants of the house to discovers the clues that allow him to unravel the mystery.

20: The Lost Mine

In relating a story to Hastings, Poirot tells of having a risky investment of fourteen thousand shares in Burma Mines Ltd, shares he has received for services