The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

Every long-running detective gets a first case, and this is Poirot's: a cook walks out of a Clapham house, and Mrs Todd, who has lost her dinner and her temper, will not let the matter rest. Poirot takes the job partly because she refuses to leave his office until he does. What looks like a fuss over kitchen help turns out to be the lid on something much worse.

The missing cook is trivial in every way that matters to the police. That is the point. The police have already filed the affair under lost cook and moved on; Poirot alone treats a vanished servant as a puzzle worth his time. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to make the case look small, and the deeper Poirot digs into the Todd household, the clearer it becomes that the vanished woman is a means to an end she never saw coming. Arthur Simpson watches from the wings with an interest that is not quite neighbourly. Eliza Dunn knows more than she says. And underneath it all sits an ever darker crime, one the little grey cells have to work through a great many cups of chocolate to reach.

Clive Exton and Agatha Christie share the writing credit, and Edward Bennett directs. David Suchet is Poirot, Hugh Fraser's Hastings blunders along beside him, Philip Jackson's Japp does the official doubting, and Pauline Moran's Miss Lemon keeps the domestic routines turning while the case sprawls over Clapham. Brigit Forsyth's Mrs Todd and Dermot Crowley's Arthur Simpson head a supporting cast that also takes in Freda Dowie's Eliza Dunn, Antony Carrick's Mr Todd, Katy Murphy's Annie and Danny Webb's porter.

It is a quiet opening gambit, and a smart one. Start with the smallest door into Poirot's world and see where it leads. It leads, as these things do, to murder. A modest beginning, but the little grey cells were never going to be satisfied with anything less.