Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Poirot goes to Apple Trees to interview Rowena Drake. Rowena doesn’t believe Joyce’s murder
story; rather, she thinks it was just Joyce’s attempt to impress Mrs. Oliver. Next to be interviewed
are the Reynoldses. Mrs. Reynolds can’t say that Joyce ever told her that she saw a murder.
Leopold, Joyce’s younger brother, doesn’t believe that Joyce saw a murder either, but he did hear
Joyce telling everyone about it. Ann, Joyce’s older sister, doesn’t believe either that Joyce had
seen a murder; she says Joyce was a liar and a fraud.
Hercule Poirot asks his old friend, an ex-superintendent named Spence, to give him a list of
murders which had taken place years before and that could possibly be the murder that Joyce
claimed to have witnessed. Spence obliges: Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe, the aunt of Rowena Drake’s
late husband, apparently died of a heart attack. Her death is suspicious because a codicil to
her will was discovered afterwards. Authorities believe that the codicil was faked by an au pair
girl, Olga Seminoff, who disappeared after the forgery was discovered. Other candidate murders
involve Charlotte Benfield, a sixteen-year-old shop assistant found dead of multiple head injuries,
with two young men under suspicion; Lesley Ferrier, a lawyer’s clerk who was stabbed in the
back; and Janet White, a schoolteacher who was strangled. Hercule Poirot thinks Janet White’s
murder is the most probable candidate for the murder Joyce witnessed, because strangulation
might not appear at first sight to be murder.
Hercule Poirot continues his investigation by interviewing Dr. Ferguson, who tells Poirot
that Joyce was once his patient. When Poirot goes Elms School, he is greeted by the headmistress,
Miss Emlyn. Meanwhile, a mathematics teacher named Elizabeth Whittaker, who was
also present at the party, gives Hercule Poirot an important piece of evidence when she reveals
that while the party-goers were playing Snapdragon, Elizabeth went out to hall and saw Rowena
Drake coming out of the lavatory on the first floor landing. Rowena stood for a moment before
coming downstairs, looking startled by something or someone she may have seen in the open
door of the library, and then dropped the flower vase she was holding. Other suggestive pieces
of evidence include the fact that Lesley Ferrier had previously been suspected of forgery. Were
Lesley and Olga working together to secure Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s inheritance?
Poirot visits a sunken garden built for Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe in an abandoned quarry, where
he meets Michael Garfield, the handsome and talented young man who designed the garden.
While there, he also meets Judith Butler’s daughter, Miranda Butler, a striking young girl who is
close to Michael and spends a great deal of time in the Quarry Garden.
Mrs. Drake meets Poirot at his guest house to tell him that Leopold Reynolds, Joyce’s younger
brother, has been drowned. Poirot reveals that Leopold had been blackmailing Joyce’s murderer
and had got in over his head. Mrs. Drake, obviously very upset by Leopold’s death, admits that
she saw Leopold in the library, which caused her to think he might have killed his sister.
Poirot persuades the police to dig up an abandoned well in the Quarry Garden. Within its
depths are discovered the remains of Olga, who had been stabbed, like Ferrier. Poirot sends
Mrs. Oliver to get Mrs. Butler and Miranda safely away from the village as soon as possible, but
when they stop for lunch, Miranda is abducted by Michael Garfield, who takes her to a pagan
sacrificial altar and tries to kill her. He is prevented from doing so by Nicholas Ransom and
Desmond Holland, two teenagers who had been at the Hallowe’en party and whom Poirot had
persuaded to trail Miranda. Michael Garfield commits suicide by swallowing the poison that he
had intended Miranda to drink.
Miranda Butler tells the authorities that she was the one who saw a murder, not her close
friend Joyce, to whom she revealed some of the details of what she witnessed. Miranda admits
that in the Quarry garden she saw Michael Garfield and Rowena Drake carrying Olga’s dead
body and heard Mrs. Drake wonder aloud if anyone was watching them. Joyce, an inveterate
fantasist, had made the story her own, and since Miranda had not attended the party, she hadn’t
contradicted Joyce. Rowena Drake heard Joyce and thought that it was Joyce who had seen her
and Michael with Olga’s corpse. Drake had always sensed that someone was watching them that
fateful day. Mrs. Drake intentionally dropped the vase of flowers in front of Miss Whittaker to
invent a pretext for being wet after having drowned Joyce. Subsequently, Leopold had used what
little he knew to blackmail Rowena, leading to his murder.
Michael Garfield played the role of lover to Olga to help Rowena Drake secure Mrs. Llewellyn-
Smythe’s inheritance. The real will, leaving Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s fortune to Olga, had been
replaced with a clumsy forgery, produced by Lesley Ferrier, which would be rendered invalid and
Rowena Drake, the sexually-frustrated wife of an invalid, would ultimately control Mrs. Llewellyn-
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