Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
After the inquest, Edna Brent, one of Sheila’s fellow secretaries, is confused by something
said in evidence, and attempts to draw it to Hardcastle’s attention; but he is too busy to speak to
her. Soon she is found dead in a telephone box on Wilbraham Crescent, strangled with her own
scarf.
After the police weary of their investigations into the dead man’s identity, a woman called
Merlina Rival (original name Florence Gapp) makes an appearance and claims the dead man was
her husband, Harry Castleton.
Colin makes an important discovery when he finds a ten-year-old girl, Geraldine Brown, who
has been observing the events at Wilbraham Crescent with a pair of opera glasses while confined
to her room. She reveals that a new laundry service delivered a heavy basket of laundry on the
day of the murder.
Miss Rival returns to the police to state that her late husband had a scar behind his ear, but
the police tell her the cut is only a few years old, despite her claim that he got the scar years ago.
Later, it becomes known that the killer is paying her to say this to the police; and her fate as a
partner in crime is to be stabbed to death at a bus station.
Poirot’s explanation is based on his inference that since the appearance of complexity must
conceal quite a simple murder. The clocks are therefore a red herring, as is the presence of Sheila
and the confusion about the corpse’s identity.
What Edna realised, having returned early to the secretarial bureau because of the damage
to her shoe, is that Miss Martindale never took any telephone call that arranged Sheila to visit
Miss Pebmarsh’s house. Miss Martindale, one of the conspirators in the murder, is secretly the
sister of Mrs. Bland, one of the neighbors of 19 Wilbraham Crescent. The first wife was heiress
to the overseas fortune, but when news of it reached the Blands they decided that the second
Mrs. Bland must pose as the heiress in order to obtain the money. When, however, Quentin
Duguesclin, who knew the first wife, decided to look her up in England, a plan was laid to
murder him and relocate the body to Miss Pebmarsh’s house. Miss Rival was murdered before
she could leak information to the police, as the killer could take no chances.
At the end of the novel, Colin also unravels the mystery of 19 Wilbraham Crescent and its
owner Miss Pebmarsh.
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