Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
The Affair at the Victory Ball
Season 3
Episode Number: 31
Season Episode: 9
Originally aired: Sunday March 3, 1991
Writer:
Agatha Christie, Andrew Marshall
Director: Renny Rye
Show Stars: Hugh Fraser (Captain Arthur Hastings), Philip Jackson (Chief Inspector
James Japp), Pauline Moran (Miss Felicity Lemon), David Suchet
(Hercule Poirot)
Guest Stars: Andrew Burt (James Ackerly), Charles Collingwood (BBC Announcer),
Sarah Crowden (Receptionist), Mark Crowdy (Viscount Cronshaw),
Haydn Gwynne (Coco Courtnay), Kate Harper (Mrs Mallaby), David
Henry (Eustace Beltane), Bryan Matheson (Butler), Brian Mitchell
(Second Actor), Nathaniel Parker (Chris Davidson), Natalie Slater (Mrs
Davidson)
Summary: Poirot is invited to a masquerade ball and advised to ”come as someone
famous” - so he decides to go as himself. And while he is there, he is
called on to solve the murder of Lord Cronshaw, who was killed at the
crowded party without anyone seeing. A fragment of a costume helps
him to unmask the killer.
Chief Inspector Japp asks Poirot to assist Scotland
Yard in the strange events which took place at a recent
costumed Victory Ball. A group of six people, headed by
the young Viscount Cronshaw, attended dressed in the
costume of the Commedia dell’arte. Lord Cronshaw was
Harlequin, his uncle, the honourable Eustace Beltane,
was Punchinello and Mrs. Mallaby, an American widow,
was Punchinella. In the roles of Pierrot and Pierette were
Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Davidson (he being a stage actor)
and finally, Miss ’Coco’ Courtenay, an actress who
was rumoured to be engaged to Lord Cronshaw, was
Columbine. The night went badly from the start when
it was obvious to the party that Cronshaw and Miss
Courtenay were not on speaking terms. The latter was
crying and asked Chris Davidson to take her home to
her flat in Chelsea. When they had gone, a friend of
Cronshaw’s spotted Harlequin in a box looking down on
the ball and called up to him to join them on the main
floor. Cronshaw left the box to join them but then disappeared.
He was found ten minutes later on the floor of
the supper room, stabbed through the heart with a table
knife, his body suffering a strange stiffness. To compound
the tragedy, Coco Courtenay was found dead in
her bed with an overdose of cocaine; at the inquest that
followed, it was found that she was addicted to the drug.
Poirot starts to investigate, finding out to everyone’s puzzlement that Cronshaw was emphatically
opposed to drugs, that Beltane’s costume had a hump and a ruffle and that a curtained recess
exists in the supper room. He arranges a get-together of the people involved at his flat where
he puts on a shadowed presentation across a back-lit screen of the six costumes but then reveals
that there were actually five. Underneath Pierrot’s loose garb is that of the slimmer-fitting
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