Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
The Hollow
Season 9
Episode Number: 58
Season Episode: 4
Originally aired: Monday April 26, 2004
Writer:
Agatha Christie, Nick Dear
Director: Simon Langton
Show Stars: David Suchet (Hercule Poirot)
Guest Stars: Angela Curran (Frances Simms), Teresa Churcher (Elsie Patterson),
Jonathan Cake (John Christow), Megan Dodds (Henrietta Savernake),
Edward Fox (Gudgeon), Claire Price (Gerda Christow), Lysette Anthony
(Veronica Cray), Lucy Briers (Beryl Collins), Harriet Cobbold (Simmons),
Edward Hardwicke (Sir Henry Angkatell), Paula Jacobs (Mrs
Pearstock), Tom Georgeson (Inspector Grange), Jamie De Courcey (Edward
Angkatell), Sarah Miles (Lady Angkatell), Caroline Martin (Midge
Hardcastle)
Summary: Poirot is spending a week-end with the Angkatells, at their country
house called The Hollow. The good-looking Dr John Christow is also
there, with his plain wife, but he is flirting (or perhaps more) with Henrietta
Savernake, a young artist. Meanwhile, Lady Angkatell is matchmaking
between Henrietta and Edward Angkatell, to the distress of
Midge, who loves Edward. Then a game of murder turns into the real
thing, when Christow is shot dead by the swimming pool. Gerda Christow
is found holding the gun, but was she set up? Sir Henry Angkatell
asks Poirot (how could he do anything else?) to find the killer, and it
soon appears that several of the house party had motives for killing
Christow, including Henrietta and Lady Angkatell. . . then the ballistic
evidence comes in, and there is a big surprise. Poirot will surely outwit
the murderer. Or will he?
The charming and eccentric Lucy Angkatell has invited the Christows, along with a number of
other members of the extended family. John is already having an affair with Henrietta Savernake,
a talented sculptor and, as is demonstrated by what follows, brilliant improviser. He has always
remembered with nostalgia an early love, Veronica Cray, who suddenly appears in the house on
Saturday night asking to borrow a box of matches. She is living at one of the two nearby cottages,
the other of which is currently occupied by Hercule Poirot, who has been invited for lunch on
Sunday. Veronica and John go off together, and he returns much too late: at 3 am.
The next day, Poirot arrives at the house to witness a scene that seems strangely staged.
Gerda is standing with a gun in her hand above the body of John, who is bleeding into the
swimming pool. Standing, seemingly transfixed, are Lucy, Henrietta, and Edward. John’s last
word, in a note of urgent appeal, is ”Henrietta”.
It seems cut and dried that Gerda is the murderess, but in taking the revolver from her hand
Henrietta apparently fumbles and drops it into the swimming pool, destroying any evidence.
Later, however, it is discovered that the pistol that Gerda had been holding was not the pistol
with which John had been shot. None of the witnesses has actually seen Gerda shoot John, and
it seems difficult to build a case against any of the other potential suspects. At first Lucy herself
seems to be a strong suspect, when it is discovered that she had kept a pistol concealed in her
basket of eggs, but the pistol seems to be of the wrong calibre. Henrietta is also implicated, not
least by the leaving of an unusual doodle in the pavilion, apparently at the time that John had
been killed. When the murder weapon turns up in Poirot’s hedge, it has fingerprints on it that
match none of the suspects.
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