9. The King of Clubs

Air date: 12/03/1989
Published: Sixth story in "Poirot's Early Cases" (1974)

As I began watching the opening scenes of this latest Agatha Christie's Poirot I seriously wondered - for a few seconds - if I was watching the right episode.

I had just read the short story The King of Clubs; a tale that I couldn't, if I'm honest, remember from the title alone. If nothing else, this episode demonstrated that adaptation is, indeed, an art form...

When you strip it down the central plot of the TV adaptation is, admittedly, fairly faithful to the original story. A young woman, Valerie Saintclair, goes to visit Henry Reedburn at his suburban villa. On finding him dead she runs to a nearby home and interrupts a family, the Oglanders, who are playing bridge, to announce there has been a murder.

Poirot eventually deduces that this was no coincidence; that the Oglanders are, in fact, Miss Saintclair's family, and that Reedburn was killed accidentally by her brother.

In the original all we are told about Reedburn is that he is an "impressario" who "suffers from a somewhat unsavoury reputation". Miss Saintclair, meanwhile is a dancer. Reedburn holds knowledge of "some secret" over her.

In the TV adaptation Reedburn is now a bigshot film producer and Miss Saintclair an actress appearing in his latest film. She is starring alongside fading hero Ralph Walton, whose dismissal by Reedburn provides a fairly predictable red herring. The episode opens in the film studio - hence my initial doubt as to whether I was watching the right episode.

Hastings and Poirot visit the filmset, as the director, Bunny Saunders, is a friend of Hastings. No time is spent at Poirot's flat in this episode, which meant no Miss Lemon. Japp is in attendance (although not in the original) and is, as ever, dismissive of Poirot's methods.