Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Mrs. Nicoletis has been behaving very nervously, as
if she were losing her nerve. One night someone gets her
drunk and kills her with poison in her beer.
Poirot focuses his attention now on the cutting up
of the rucksack. By comparing an example of the rucksack
type destroyed with others, he identifies an unusual
corrugated base, and suggests to the police that
the rucksack may have been part of a clever international
smuggling operation. The rucksacks were sold to
innocent students, and then exchanged as a means of
transporting drugs and gems. Mrs. Nicoletis had been
bankrolling the organisation, but was not the brain behind
it. When the police visited Hickory Road on an unconnected
issue, the murderer had cut up the rucksack
to avoid its being found and removed light bulbs to avoid
being recognised.
Patricia Lane comes to Nigel and admits that, in an
effort to keep a dangerous poison safe, she has taken
the morphine from the bottle in his drawer and substituted
for it bicarbonate of soda. Now, however, the bottle
of bicarbonate of soda has been taken from her own
drawer. While they are searching for this bottle Patricia
mentions that she is intending to write to his father in
order to reconcile the two. Nigel tells her that the reason
for his estrangement from his father is that he discovered that his father had poisoned his
mother. This is why he changed his name and carries two passports.
Nigel comes to Inspector Sharpe and tells him about the missing morphine, but while he is
there, Patricia telephones to say that she has discovered something further. By the time that Nigel
and Sharpe get to the house, Patricia has been killed by a blow to the head. Mr. Akibombo comes
to Sharpe and says that he had taken Patricia’s bicarbonate to ease a stomach complaint; when
he took a teaspoonful of the bicarbonate, however, he had stomach pains and later discovered
that the white powder was in fact the boracic powder. By the time Patricia had substituted the
bicarbonate, the morphine had already been substituted by the stolen boracic powder.
Poirot, whose suspicions about Valerie Hobhouse’s role in the smuggling operation have been
proved correct by a police raid on her beauty shop, now closes the case. The murderer has
been the most obvious person, Nigel Chapman, who was known to have the morphine in his
possession. He killed Celia because she knew about his dual identity and also knew that Valerie
travelled abroad on a false passport. He killed Mrs. Nicoletis because she was sure to give the
smuggling operation away under pressure, and killed Patricia because she was likely to draw to
his father’s attention the recent events.
When Poirot outlines to Nigel’s father’s solicitor the case against Nigel, the solicitor is able to
provide final proof. Nigel’s mother had been poisoned, not by his father, but by Nigel himself.
When the father discovered this he forced him to write a confession and left it with his solicitor
together with a letter explaining that it should be produced were there any evidence of further
wrongdoing by his son.
Valerie confirms Poirot’s solution further. She has placed the call to the police station, apparently
from Patricia, after Nigel had already killed her. The green ink was a double-bluff intended
to divert suspicion away from him. Valerie is willing to incriminate Nigel fully because Mrs. Nicoletis
was actually her mother.
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