32. Death in the Clouds

Air date: 12/01/1992
Published: 1935

There are some 'whodunit?' plots that develop with a bewildering array of suspects, all with means and motive. A less common, alternative approach is the type of storyline where it appears nobody could have done it. The latest story to be adapted in Agatha Christie's Poirot falls in the latter category.

Death in the Clouds concerns the murder of Madame Giselle, a French moneylender, on board a plane from Paris to London. Poirot is one of the passengers. She is found dead in her seat, shortly before the plane is due to land, with a puncture mark on her neck. An initial suggestion of an allergic reaction to a wasp sting (a wasp is seen buzzing around the cabin) gives way to murder when Poirot finds a small dart on the floor. The subsequent discovery of a blowpipe (lodged where Poirot had been sitting!) leads to the assumption that this is how she was killed. But who could have stood up and used a blowpipe without the other passengers seeing?

Poirot eventually deduces that one passenger, Norman Gale, a dentist, had donned his dentist's coat in the lavatory and walked down the aisle as if he were a steward (on the basis that nobody notices a steward) and had pushed the dart into Madame Giselle's neck. Motive? Money. He had recently married Giselle's abandoned daughter, who stood to inherit a fortune. Gale had utilised both the wasp and the blowpipe to confuse the authorities.

The adaptation adheres closely to the central facts of the story, but not without significant changes of detail. Some of these changes do affect the pace and emphases in the story.

The original opens with the plane about to take off. One passenger, Jane Grey, is the focus of attention (the 'protagonist', to use a writer's term). Madame Giselle is dead by the end of the first chapter.

By contrast, the adaptation features quite a prelude to the fatal flight, and is developed around the French Tennis Championships in Paris (won by England's Fred Perry). Poirot sees another passenger, Lady Horbury, arguing with Madame Giselle at a party.

No fewer than four characters are cut for the adaptation: archaeologist Armand Dupont (his son Jean survives the cull for TV), businessman James Ryder (whose financial woes make him an obvious 'red herring' to be under the thumb of the moneylender), Doctor Bryant (whose medical background might equip him with a knowledge of the snake poison on the dart, and the means of acquiring it), and a junior steward, Davis (for TV Miss Grey - a hairdresser in the original - becomes the colleague of the senior steward, Mitchell).

Japp is prominent in the original, although the French inspector, Fournier, is given more of a role than in the adaptation, frequently expressing sympathy with Poirot's methods.

With the murder occurring so early in the original much of the book is spent with Poirot (along with his two police colleagues) trekking back and forth between suspects, trying to work out who did it - and how. In the adaptation suspicion falls much more heavily - and more quickly - upon Lady Horbury, an inveterate gambler, who owed Madame Giselle lots of money.

In the original Gale and Grey fall for each other, but, by the end, Poirot engineers for the latter to go on an archaeological dig with the Duponts (young Jean also has a soft spot for her). In the adaptation Poirot is left consoling a tearful Grey.

In the original when Gale is unearthed he turns on Poirot and declares, "You damned interfering little mountebank!" For TV there is a more subdued, almost touching, scene where Grey asks him why he did it. "For the money, Jane, for a great deal of money", is his rueful reply.