Hallowe'en Party

A village Hallowe'en party, all costumes and apple-bobbing, and a young girl who boasts that she once saw a murder. Nobody believes her. Children say such things, the adults agree, and the evening goes on. Later, her body is found drowned in the apple-bobbing bucket. The boast stops being a story.

Ariadne Oliver heard the boast, and she calls in Poirot. The girl was talking about a murder from years before, and someone at the party was very anxious that the old case stay buried. Poirot picks his way through the village and its families: Judith Butler, Rowena Drake, Miranda Butler, Mrs Reynolds, Frances Drake, Edmund Drake, Reverend Cottrell and Miss Whittaker. The party was meant to be harmless fun. Someone used it for something else entirely.

Mark Gatiss wrote the adaptation with Christie, and Charlie Palmer directed. Zoë Wanamaker is back as Oliver, with Amelia Bullmore as Judith Butler, Deborah Findlay as Rowena Drake, Mary Higgins as Miranda Butler, Sophie Thompson as Mrs Reynolds, Georgia King and Ian Hallard as Frances and Edmund Drake, Timothy West as Reverend Cottrell and Fenella Woolgar as Miss Whittaker.

Hallowe'en is a clever setting for a murder: a night when everyone dresses up and pretends, and nobody quite trusts what they see. The episode gets real mileage out of it, building a slow dread through the evening until the discovery in the bucket lands. It feels earned, not convenient. A body in a bucket of water is a nastier image than most murder scenes manage, precisely because it is so ordinary.

The mystery itself is tidy and fair, the sort that rewards attention. But the image that stays with you is the party itself: the costumes, the apple-bobbing, and a girl whose boast turned out to be the truest thing said all night. It is a very English kind of horror, and Poirot is exactly the right man to walk through it.