The King of Clubs

The setting is a film studio, where the line between crime and pretence is thinner than anywhere else, and the victim is Henry Reedburn, the tyrannical head of the place. The story turns on the question of whether a murder can be disguised as something else entirely, and a deck of playing cards holds the answer. If the death is not a murder, then the police have no case and someone gets away with something. It went out on 12 March 1989, near the end of the first series.

The clue arrives in the shape of a missing card. A deck found at the scene is short a card, and the absent king of clubs turns out to be worth more than any witness statement. Around the death move the studio's residents and hangers-on: Valerie Saintclair, Bunny Saunders, Prince Paul of Maurania, Miss Deloy, Ralph Walton, and a young man whose part in the business takes its time coming clear. The studio's own gossip is the case's raw material, and nobody at a film studio can resist gossip. The murdered man was a bully, which gives the suspect list a head start. Poirot watches the performances and notes that at a film studio, everyone is acting even when the cameras are off.

Michael Baker and Agatha Christie wrote it, Renny Rye directed. Niamh Cusack plays Valerie Saintclair, David Swift is Henry Reedburn, Jonathan Coy plays Bunny Saunders, Jack Klaff is Prince Paul of Maurania, Rosie Timpson plays Miss Deloy, Gawn Grainger is Ralph Walton and Marc Culwick plays the young man. David Suchet, Hugh Fraser and Philip Jackson carry the investigation.

The studio setting gives the whole affair a pleasing sheen of fakery. Everybody lies, everybody performs, and a single misplaced card cuts through all of it. By the end the missing card has its say, and the performances stop. It is the lightest of the first series' cases and one of the most entertaining.