Murder in the Mews

Bonfire Night is meant to be noise and sparklers, but the morning after the celebrations a woman is found shot dead in her flat, and the question of whether she died by her own hand or someone else's refuses to settle. But the police cannot decide. Poirot is called in and takes the view that the facts do not behave like a suicide.

The enquiry grows more tangled than the Gunpowder Plot, which is the episode's own billing and a fair one. Every witness offers a piece of the picture, or a lie shaped like one: Jane Plenderleith, who found the body, Laverton West, whose name keeps rising to the surface, Major Eustace, Mrs Pierce, Divisional Inspector Jameson and Dr Brett. Poirot weighs each account against the small physical details of the flat, and the flat itself starts to look like the most honest witness of all. Nobody's story survives contact with the furniture. The Bonfire Night rhyme the title plays on is a gift to the production, and the episode uses it for everything it is worth.

Clive Exton and Agatha Christie wrote it, Edward Bennett directed, and the bonfire backdrop gives the story its clock. It went out on 15 January 1989, early in the first series, and the formula is already fully formed. David Suchet heads the cast as Poirot, with Hugh Fraser's Hastings, Philip Jackson's Japp and Pauline Moran's Miss Lemon in support. Juliette Mole plays Jane Plenderleith, David Yelland is Laverton West, James Faulkner takes Major Eustace, Gabrielle Blunt is Mrs Pierce, John Cording plays Divisional Inspector Jameson and Barrie Cookson is Dr Brett.

The bonfire backdrop is a gift, and the episode makes the most of it. A suicide or murder question wrapped in fireworks, settled by the little grey cells while the rest of London is still sweeping up. You could ask for worse ways to spend the hour.