The Adventure of the Western Star

A Belgian film star starts receiving threatening letters, and like anyone sensible, she takes them straight to her old friend Poirot. Marie Marvelle (Rosalind Bennett) is not the kind of woman who frightens easily, and the letters are specific enough to be taken seriously, which is why they land on Poirot's table. Before long Lady Yardly (Caroline Goodall) is getting them too. Two women, two threats, one pattern: somebody wants to frighten the people who can least afford to be frightened.

Poirot sets to work on where the letters came from and what they are really for. The people around the two women all have reasons to look worried: Marie Marvelle's circle, Henrik Van Braks (Struan Rodger), Gregorie Rolf (Oliver Cotton), Lord Yardly (Alister Cameron), with Inspector Dougall (Barry Woolgar) on the official side. Hastings trails along, Miss Lemon types, and Japp makes his usual solid contribution. The pieces are few, but they fit together in a way that makes the ending both tidy and unsettling.

Clive Exton wrote the script with Agatha Christie, and Richard Spence directed. It is a compact story, well told, and Rosalind Bennett's Marie Marvelle has real presence as the star caught in the middle of it. Caroline Goodall makes Lady Yardly more than a second victim, and the two women's scenes together give the story its spine.

The fun here is watching a small mystery stay small. No bodies pile up, no empires topple. Just letters, threats, and the quiet work of finding out who wrote them and why. Threats are cheap to write and expensive to live under, and the episode never forgets that. Poirot solves it, as he always does, but the episode leaves you thinking about how easily fear is manufactured and how quickly it spreads. It is not the grandest mystery the series ever made, but it is one of the most honest.