The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb

An English-American museum expedition opens an ancient Egyptian tomb, and then the members of it start dying. It is the kind of run of bad luck that reads as a curse, and the newspapers are happy to call it one. Poirot has little time for curses and plenty for arithmetic, so he books a passage to Egypt. It is the kind of assignment that would have most detectives reaching for a second opinion.

The story gives him a lovely problem. A series of deaths that look supernatural, and a list of survivors who all look entirely human. Somebody in the party wanted this expedition to end badly, and the trick is to work out which deaths are clues and which are theatre. And Hastings comes along to be alarmed at regular intervals, while Miss Lemon stays home, which is where the paperwork lives. The tomb itself leaves him cold. He is far more interested in the people who opened it, and people are easier to question.

Clive Exton and Agatha Christie wrote it, Peter Barber-Fleming directed. David Suchet is Poirot, Hugh Fraser is Hastings and Pauline Moran is Miss Lemon. Rolf Saxon plays Dr. Ames, Olivier Pierre Henry Schneider, Jon Strickland Dr. Fosswell, Bill Bailey Felix Bleibner, Paul Birchard Rupert Bleibner, Simon Cowell-Parker Nigel Harper and Grant Thatcher Sir Guy Willard.

The Egyptian setting is a genuine change of air, and the episode uses it properly, letting the heat and the dust do some of the suspect-building. But the sand is a distraction. What matters is who stood to gain, and who was willing to let a superstition take the blame. The curse makes good headlines and a poor explanation, and Poirot knows which one to trust. He has been asked to solve a curse, and he does it the only way he knows, by treating the curse as a suspect like any other.