The Case of the Missing Will

A wealthy man who is terminally ill asks Poirot to act as executor of his new will. Before he can write it, he is dead, and the old will has disappeared from the house at the same time. It is hard to imagine a clearer invitation to look at the family. A dying man's wishes are a fragile thing at the best of times, and this household had no intention of letting them survive him.

The household is full of people who stood to inherit, and the dead man's plans were about to redraw all their futures. Poirot and Hastings go through the house the way they always do, slow and thorough, with a faint air of disapproval, and the missing document begins to look like a statement of its own. Someone wanted the old arrangements to stand, or wanted the new ones never to see the light of day. And either way, somebody benefits, and the pleasure of the episode is in watching a paper chase turn into a people chase.

Douglas Watkinson and Agatha Christie wrote it, John Bruce directed. David Suchet and Hugh Fraser carry the investigation, with Philip Jackson's Japp and Pauline Moran's Miss Lemon in support. Beth Goddard plays Violet Wilson, Rowena Cooper Sarah Siddaway, Richard Durden Dr. Pritchard, Mark Kingston Andrew Marsh, Susan Tracy Phyllida Campion and Gillian Hanna Margaret Baker.

There is something satisfying about a mystery in which the central piece of evidence is absent. Poirot has to rebuild the dead man's intentions from the reactions of the people who were frightened of them, and that is a better puzzle than any document could have been. Wills leave traces, and so do the people who handle them. And the dead man got his executor in the end, which is more than most of the suspects bargained for.