Cat Among the Pigeons

A prestigious girls' school is supposed to be the safest place in England. The staff at this one are being murdered, one after another, and the reason has something to do with a princess, a foreign revolution and a trove of priceless rubies. Poirot arrives to find a school full of frightened girls and teachers who all know more than they are saying.

The rubies are the engine of the whole business. A revolution abroad sent them on a strange journey, a kidnapped princess is tangled up in it, and the jewels ended up hidden somewhere in the quiet routines of an English school. Poirot works through the staff and the pupils: Miss Bulstrode, Prince Ali, Bob Rawlinson, Mr and Mrs Forbes, Patricia Forbes, Miss Johnson, Miss Rich and Miss Chadwick. Each of them gives him a version of events. The versions do not agree.

James Kent directs, from a script by Agatha Christie and Mark Gatiss. Harriet Walter plays Miss Bulstrode, Raji James is Prince Ali. The school is populated by Adam De Ville as Bob Rawlinson, Don Gallagher and Georgie Glen as Mr and Mrs Forbes, Georgia Cornick as Patricia Forbes, Carol MacReady as Miss Johnson, Claire Skinner as Miss Rich and Susan Wooldridge as Miss Chadwick.

There is something extra unpleasant about murder at a girls' school, even when the victims are grown women. The episode gets real tension out of that unease. And the mystery plays fair: the pieces are all in view, scattered around the school like the rubies themselves, waiting for Poirot to pick them up. The school is a small world, and the episode treats it as one, with all the petty loyalties and rivalries of a village in miniature.

It is a big, confident story, a long way from the drawing-room puzzles, and the school setting gives it a freshness the series sometimes lacked by this point. Christie wrote the novel in 1959, late in her career, when she was at her most relaxed about letting a plot sprawl, and the adaptation keeps that generous spirit.