Air date: 06/01/1991
Published: Eighteenth story in "Poirot's Early Cases" (1974)
To be honest, some of Agatha Christie's short stories were, indeed, short, to the point of being rather spartan in detail. Such stories inevitably called for significant embellishment to bring them to the screen.
Such is the case with this tale, which opened the third series of Agatha Christie's Poirot. The original story begins with Poirot receiving a letter from the elderly Miss Amelia Barrowby, asking to meet with him to discuss a delicate matter. Before he can meet her, however, Miss Barrowby dies. On the advice of her doctor the police are called in and a post mortem reveals death to be by a large dose of strychnine poisoning.
When Poirot visits he notes the pristine garden - with the exception of an unfinished border of seashells (yes, obvious clue there!). The only real suspects are her niece, Mary Delafontaine and her husband, Henry - who live with her - and her Russian aid and companion, Katrina.
Strychnine, as Christie points out on more than one occasion in her stories, is very fast acting. The problem was that Miss Barrowby and the Delafontaines ate the same meal the evening before she died. She didn't take coffee (which would have masked the unpleasant taste of the poison). The only other possibility is the digestion powders she took, administered by Katrina. When it later transpires that most of her estate has been left to Katrina she seems the obvious suspect.
As it turns out, Poirot deduces that, unbeknown to the family cook or Katrina, the Delafontaines had purchased some of Miss Barrowby's favourite oysters, which - because they are swallowed whole - could be doctored with strychnine without the taste being noticed. The shells were hidden - you've guessed it - in the flower bed.
So much for the somewhat meagre plot. Now, the embellishments. First, the adaptation opens at the Chelsea Flower Show, where Poirot had had has a new variant of rose named after him. Miss Barrowby (who does not realise he has not yet received her letter) bumps into him and gives him a packet of "stocks" seeds (a clue to how the Delafontaines have been frittering her money away). It is quite some time before we reach the point where Poirot receives her letter at his flat.
Second, Katrina is having a romantic relationship with a Russian who works at his country's embassy. He denies all knowledge of her existence. Third, she is seen to be a devout Russian Orthodox believer, which probably makes her unpopular with her country's Communist overlords, hence the secrecy.
Hastings, who is not in the original, is suffering from what appears to be hay-fever. In the usual amusing end-piece this is discovered, in fact, to be an allergy to the "discreet manly cologne" Poirot is wearing!
Japp is not in the original; the investigating officer being one Inspector Rice. Curiously, his name is transferred in the adaptation to the doctor (not named in the original). Dr Rice looks shifty once or twice and appears at the denouement for no obvious reason other than to add to the suspense by being, presumably, a possible surprise culprit!
One other point of note: After twenty episodes, over two series, we finally arrive at a story where Miss Lemon does appear in the original! I said at the outset of this project that part of the early success of Poirot was down to the development of the 'team'. In their own different ways, Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon all act as foils, to enable David Suchet to develop the character of Poirot.
All of them, therefore, are given larger roles on TV than in Christie's books. But this is especially the case with Miss Lemon. Apart from this story, she only appears in a couple of the short stories in "The Labours of Hercules" collection, and in "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest". She appears in just four novels: "Hickory Dickory Dock", "Dead Man's Folly", "Third Girl" and "Elephants Can Remember". Irony of ironies: By the time the TV producers came to film the last three of those novels, the 'team' had long disappeared from the scene!
In the original of this story (first published in The Strand in 1935) she is described as being 48, and of "unprepossessing appearance", with a passion for order that almost rivals that of Poirot himself. Her only passion in life is the creation of the perfect filing system. On TV this was utilised in earlier episodes.
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