3. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly

Air date: 22/01/1989
Published: Fourth story in "Poirot's Early Cases" (1974)

For the second week running our dapper detective was not so much solving serious crime as discovering deception.

Last week, in Murder in the Mews it was a suicide made to look like murder, here in The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly it was the fabricated kidnapping of a young child. Then again, perhaps both would be treated as serious crimes by today's law enforcers. Oh well...

The basic plot is, I think, a bit weak, to say the least. The Waverlys live in a large country mansion. Although it has been a Waverly house for generations, Mrs Ada Waverly is the one who now has plenty of money. We are meant to believe that when she drags her heels over splashing out on the restoration of their country pile, her husband concocts a plan to kidnap their son, in order to relieve her of much-needed cash. How he was going to explain his upturn in fortunes if the plan worked, we are never told.

A series of threatening letters (bogus, obviously) are received warning that the kidnapping will happen, at 12 noon on the 29th. And sure enough it does, right under the noses of the police.

In the original most of the story is told in flashback, the Waverlys having approached Poirot after Johnnie has gone missing. Understandably, this wouldn't make for great TV viewing, so in the adaptation Poirot is approached at the stage of the threatening letters, in order to be on hand when the fateful day arrives. Except he isn't. In a somewhat farcial scene, he and Hastings go out in the latter's sports car, which promptly breaks down, forcing Poirot to make an undignified hike across the fields to get back to the Waverly's home.

In the original the leading policeman is a fairly nondescript Inspector McNeil. However, as I commented in the previous post, it was necessary to present the whole 'team' at this early stage, so Japp is once again in attendance. In fact, he seems to have got out of the wrong side of the bed on this one. First he is rather rude and dismissive when Marcus Waverly and Poirot first approach him. And then he insists on calling his friend Mister Poirot throughout, for some strange reason.

Hugh Fraser was rapidly developing the character of Hastings, as a somewhat debonair, if rather clueless comrade. Miss Lemon's presence is limited to plans for the perfect filing system in the opening scenes.

In the original the scam involves Waverly, his butler Tredwell and "some friend of Waverly" who remains unknown. In the TV production it is Waverly, Tredwell and another domestic, Jessie Withers, who turns out to be Tredwell's neice.