Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Death in the Clouds (1)
Season 4
Episode Number: 35
Season Episode: 3
Originally aired: Sunday January 12, 1992
Writer:
Agatha Christie, William Humble
Director: Stephen Whittaker (II)
Show Stars: Philip Jackson (Chief Inspector James Japp), David Suchet (Hercule
Poirot)
Guest Stars: Harry Audley (Barraclough), John Bleasdale (Mitchell), Jenny Downham
(Anne Giselle), David Firth (Lord Horbury), Cathryn Harrison
(Lady Horbury), Roger Heathcott (Daniel Clancy), Richard Ireson (Inspector
Fournier), Gabrielle Lloyd (Elise), Guy Manning (Jean Dupont),
Eve Pearce (Madame Giselle), Amanda Royle (Venetia Kerr), Shaun
Scott (Norman Gale), Sarah Woodward (Jane Grey)
Summary: Poirot falls asleep on a short aeroplane flight from Paris to London,
and one of the other passengers, Madame Giselle, is killed by a poison
dart while he sleeps. Poirot finds out that she was a money-lender,
which may provide a motive for the killing.
Frustrated with the evident artificiality of the blowpipe,
an item that could hardly have been used without
being seen by another passenger, Poirot suggests that
the means of delivering the dart may have been something
else. Is it the flute of one passenger, or perhaps
one of the ancient tubes carried by one of the two French
archaeologists on board? Or maybe Lady Horbury’s long
cigarette holder?
Poirot’s focus is upon a wasp that has been seen in
the compartment and which provided evidence for the
original theory of the cause of death. Without explaining
himself, he asks for a detailed list of the items in
the possession of the passengers, and finds an incriminating
clue: Norman Gale, a dentist who has seemingly
never been in the area of the plane where the victim
was killed, and has no apparent motive for committing
the murder, had an empty matchbox and a lighter. He
appears to be the killer, but how can he have committed
the murder, when he was apparently in conversation
with Jane Grey (the novel’s effective heroine) throughout
the flight? And why would he have committed the
crime? And why were there two coffee spoons in the victim’s
saucer?
Madame Giselle is suspected of using blackmail to ensure that her clients pay up, so any
one of the passengers could either have owed her money or feared exposure. Equally, Madame
Giselle had an estranged daughter who inherits her considerable estate: could one of the female
passengers be this heiress? Much of the novel focuses on the pursuit of this line of enquiry,
with the passengers coming under suspicion in turn. Special attention is given to Mr. Clancy, a
detective novelist who enables Christie to include the same sort of parodies of her craft achieved
in other novels through the character of Ariadne Oliver.
The only other suspect who proves of material significance is, however, the Countess of Horbury,
whose maid has been called into the compartment during the flight where she would have
77