22. The Million Dollar Bond Robbery

Air date: 13/01/1991
Published: Fifth story in "Poirot Investigates" (1924)

In contrast to the previous episode, I found the original of this episode to be a delightful short story, with some clever detail.

The London and Scotland bank plan to send £1 million worth of liberty bonds (which, in the TV production, we are told amount to 'blank cheques') to the US.

A Mr Philip Ridgeway takes the bonds to America on board the Olympia ship. They are in a locked portmanteau. The only keyholders are Ridgeway himself and two other senior bankers, Mr Vavasour and Mr Shaw.

The portmanteau is broken into, however, and, despite a search of the ship the bonds have disappeared.

In the original this part of the story is told to Poirot by Miss Esmee Farquhar, who is engaged to Ridgeway. It transpires that Shaw had ordered the lock for the portmanteau to be made specially. He was ill the day Ridgeway set sail for America.

Poirot claims the case is easy, which illicits from Hastings the accusation "You're so confoundedly conceited!" Poirot goes to Liverpool to meet the Olympia on its return and questions the crew about an elderly man who had the cabin next to Ridgeway. He works out that Shaw, who pretended to be ill, had, in fact, travelled on the ship in disguise. He had already substituted the bonds for forgeries before they left the UK and had thrown the forgeries overboard while on board the Olympia. The real bonds had been sent via a 'confederate' on another ship, the Gigantic, with instructions to sell them as soon as the Olympia arrived.

Several changes were made in the TV adaptation, which, on this occasion, I don't think necessarily made for a better story. First, Christie's tendency to have part of a story told in flashback to Poirot tends regularly to be ignored by the producers - understandably - and so it is here. Here, Poirot is called in by Mr Vavasour after Mr Shaw is nearly killed by a passing motorist. Shaw was to take the bonds to America. When he is apparently nearly poisoned it seems clear that something is afoot. Esmee Dalgleish (Farquhar was obviously considered too antiquated a name!) is not only Ridgeway's fiance but Vavasour's secretary. Ridgeway, who replaces Shaw on the trip, is also now something of a gambler, running up debts.

The detail about the portmanteau being broken into, the bonds disappearing, and something being thrown overboard is retained, but for TV this is carried out by a female accomplice of Shaw, who first appears as his doudy nurse, and then on board ship as the glamourous American, Miranda Brooks (who, needless to say, Hastings finds to be a real stunner!). The ship is now the Queen Mary, which made its maiden voyage to New York in 1934. Newsreel footage of the event is interspersed.

Police inspector McNeil becomes, for TV, McNeil, the rather unpleasant head of the bank's security, who resents Poirot's presence, and who has Vavasour arrested after his key is found to be missing (it transpired that Miss Dalgleish had stolen it to somehow deflect attention from Ridgeway). No second ship is involved.