Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
In the second part of the novel, Poirot is persuaded to investigate the case by Peter Lord, who
is in love with Elinor and wants her to be acquitted at all costs. Poirot’s investigation focuses on a
small number of elements. Was the poison in the sandwiches, which everyone ate, or something
else, such as the tea that was prepared by Nurse Hopkins and drunk by only Mary and herself?
What is the secret of Mary Gerrard’s birth, which everyone seems so keen to conceal? Is there
any significance in the scratch of a thorn on Nurse Hopkins’s wrist? Is Peter Lord right to draw
Poirot’s attention to evidence that someone watching through the window might have poisoned
the sandwich, thinking that it would be eaten by Elinor? In the third part of the novel, the case
appears to go badly for Elinor, until her Defence unveils three theories that might exonerate her.
The first (that Mary committed suicide) is difficult for anyone to really believe, and the second
(Peter Lord’s theory of the killer outside the window) is unconvincing. But the third theory is
Poirot’s.
A torn pharmaceutical label that the Prosecution supposed to have held morphine hydrochloride,
the poison, had in fact held apomorphine hydrochloride, an emetic. This was revealed because
on an ampoule, the M in Morphine would be capital; Poirot finds a lowercase M - thus it
isn’t morphine. The capitalized prefix ”Apo” had been carefully torn off. Nurse Hopkins had injected
herself with this emetic, apomorphine, in order to vomit the poison that she had ingested
in the tea, which explains her quick departure from the table as soon as the tea was consumed
that fateful day. Her claim to have scratched herself on a thorn is disproved when it is revealed
that the rose tree in question was a thornless variety: Zephyrine Drouhin.
If the means were simple, the motive is complex. Mary Gerrard is not the daughter of Eliza
and Bob Gerrard. Instead — as Poirot has discovered from Nurse Hopkins in the course of the
investigation — she is the illegitimate daughter of Laura Welman and Sir Lewis Rycroft, which
made her the heiress to Mrs. Welman’s estate since she was actually a closer relative than Elinor.
When Nurse Hopkins encouraged Mary to write a will, Mary was prompted to name as beneficiary
the woman that she supposed to be her aunt, Mary Riley (Eliza Gerrard’s sister), in New Zealand.
Mary Riley’s married name is Mary Draper. Mary Draper is none other than Nurse Hopkins as
two witnesses of the defence (Amelia Mary Sedley and Edward John Marshall, both from New
Zealand), confirm in court.
Poirot ends the novel by rebuking Peter Lord for his clumsy efforts to implicate the hypothetical
killer outside the window. He has planted evidence and led Poirot to it in a desperate bid
to free Elinor. Lord’s momentary embarrassment is presumably alleviated by Poirot’s assurance
that it is to him, and not to her former love Roddy, that Elinor is now likely to become married.
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