Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
sellers were allowed on the boat at the port and they are questioned, particularly as one of their
wares was found on the floor of the cabin. Poirot though is puzzled: the door to the cabin was
locked from within and he cannot see a reason why Mrs Clapperton would open it to a bead
seller, nor why such a person would murder her and lay himself so open to suspicion.
That evening, at Poirot’s request, the other passengers
are assembled in the lounge. Poirot addresses them
and unwraps a ventriloquist’s doll which speaks and repeats
the words used by Mrs Clapperton from behind
the locked cabin door to her husband. The man himself
jumps up... and promptly collapses, dead of a heart
attack.
Poirot explains: Mrs Clapperton was already dead
when her husband, witnessed by Poirot, Kitty and
Pamela, heard her ”speak” to him from inside the cabin
but it was her husband using his music hall act. He
showed his card trick to the others to divert attention
away from his real skill. Poirot’s use of the doll in the
lounge was helped by a stewardess behind a curtain
providing the voice. Poirot is not surprised that Clapperton
died of a weak heart — digitalin would have produced
symptoms of dilated pupils which he didn’t see in
Mrs Clapperton but he did see in her husband and the
prescription was for him.
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