The Chocolate Box

Poirot is back in Belgium, his homeland, and an old case from his early days with the Belgian police comes back to life. He tells the story to Japp, and the telling is the episode: a confession, of a sort, that one case nearly got the better of him.

The mystery is a matter of pride. A local case that proved exceptionally tricky, one that nearly slipped past the little grey cells, is dug up and walked through again, and the pleasure is in watching the young Poirot of memory make the same careful moves the old one makes now. The suspects have the kind of names that sound like old friends by the end. The Deroulards, the Mesnards, the Beaujeus and the rest: a full Belgian household of them. The title promises something sweet and delivers something considerably more bitter.

Douglas Watkinson and Agatha Christie wrote it, Ken Grieve directed. David Suchet is Poirot and Philip Jackson is Japp, with Rosalie Crutchley as Madame Deroulard, Anna Chancellor as Virginie Mesnard, David de Keyser as Gaston Beaujeu, Jonathan Hackett as Claude Chantalier, Geoffrey Whitehead as Xavier St. Alard, Mark Eden as Boucher, Jonathan Barlow as Jean-Louis Ferraud and James Coombes as Paul Deroulard. Hastings is noticeable by his absence, which gives the episode a slightly different rhythm.

It is a fond, slightly melancholy entry, the closest the series comes to letting Poirot tell his own story. The solution, when it comes, is a reminder that even the best detective has cases that stay with him, and that the near-misses are the ones he remembers longest. For a man so tidy in his habits, it is oddly moving to watch him pick over the one drawer that never quite closed. And Japp, who usually hears Poirot explain his successes, gets to hear about the one that almost got away.