Death in the Clouds

The murder happens at ten thousand feet, which is either a stroke of genius or a very foolish place to commit a crime. Poirot is asleep when it happens, a rare lapse he will not enjoy being reminded of. A notorious French moneylender is killed on the flight from Paris to London with a poisoned dart, and by the time Poirot wakes, the cabin is full of suspects with nowhere to put them.

The victim will be little mourned. The method is the puzzle. A dart requires closeness and a steady hand, and neither travels well in a small enclosed space. Everyone aboard had a seat, and everyone aboard had a story. Passengers, crew and a fair number of people who had done business with the moneylender: the passenger list is a full set of motives.

The claustrophobia is the point. The episode keeps its suspects in one room, so to speak, and lets them squirm while the plane does the pacing for them. Sarah Woodward's Jane Grey, Shaun Scott's Norman Gale, Cathryn Harrison's Lady Horbury and David Firth's Lord Horbury are joined by Amanda Royle's Venetia Kerr, Jenny Downham's Anne Giselle and Eve Pearce's Madame Giselle, with Philip Jackson's Japp and Richard Ireson's Inspector Fournier doing the official heavy lifting. It is a mystery with nowhere to hide, and the episode enjoys that.

William Humble and Agatha Christie wrote it, Stephen Whittaker directed. It is a small, neat piece of business that works because the setting does half the job. You cannot run very far from a murder on an aeroplane, and neither can the truth. And for once Poirot is the last person to notice anything, which the episode enjoys more than he does. He spends the rest of the flight making up for it, which is a very Poirot way to spend an hour.