Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
least because she was hiding outside the room in which the murder was committed. Poirot warns
her to be careful, but it is only by chance that she is not killed by a cannon ball trap set above
her bedroom door.
In the denouement of the novel Poirot is able to unmask several characters: Pilar is an imposter
who was with Simeon’s grand daughter when she died because of a bomb attack, and
Stephen Farr is revealed to be an illegitimate son. Neither, however, is the murderer. The real
killer committed the murder earlier and prepared the room with all the furniture piled up and a
long cord hanging out of the window. The final touch was a ’Dying Pig’ toy: a rubber bladder that
was rigged to provide the apparent death-scream as the furniture fell. The room had to be locked
in order that the carefully staged room would not be entered and discovered.
The only person able to release the piled furniture from outside the house was also the last
person supposed to have seen the victim alive: Superintendent Sugden. He was yet another
illegitimate son of the victim, who used a fictitious theft of the diamonds to trick Simeon into
opening the safe and then killed him. A bottle of animal blood, prevented from clotting by the
addition of sodium citrate, was used to dress the scene and create the impression that the murder
had taken place much later. Crucially, Sugden had intended to recover the incriminating ’Dying
Pig’ toy before it was noticed, but once Poirot had learned of it, he had to provide a faked clue,
physically similar, in order to protect the means by which the murder was committed.
At the end of the book two of the imposters — Pilar and Stephen — marry. Colonel Johnson,
stunned by the loss of his best policeman, perhaps speaks for the reader when he asks ’What’s
the police coming to?’.
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