The Underdog

The managing director of a chemical company is found bludgeoned to death in his study, and the company's formula for a new synthetic rubber has vanished at the same time. The police have a corpse and a burglary; Poirot arrives with the working theory that they are the same incident. The two facts refuse to stay separate, and the sooner everyone admits it, the sooner the case gets somewhere.

The victim was a hard man, and the household around him is a study in mixed feelings. Nobody is sorry he is dead, which is usually the moment a Poirot case gets interesting. The suspects are all attached to the firm in one way or another, each carrying a motive made of ambition or fear, and the formula keeps coming up in conversation like a third person in the room. Poirot's gift here is patience. He lets the corporate posturing run on until the real grievance underneath shows itself.

Bill Craig and Agatha Christie wrote it, John Bruce directed. David Suchet's Poirot is joined by Hugh Fraser's Hastings and Pauline Moran's Miss Lemon. Ann Bell plays Lady Astwell, Adie Allen Lily, Denis Lill Sir Reuben, Jonny Phillips Charles, Bill Wallis Horace Trefusis, Ian Gelder Victor Astwell and Andrew Seear Humphrey Naylor.

It is a story about how money talks and how money lies, and there is real pleasure in watching Poirot refuse to be impressed by either. But the setting is all boardroom and laboratory, and the suspects are the people who live in those rooms. Poirot moves among them like a man checking the locks, which is more or less what he is doing. A formula can be replaced. A dead managing director cannot, and somebody wanted it that way. The company's paperwork, Poirot is sure, is a better crime scene than the study.