The Clocks

Dover. A blind woman's house. An unidentified corpse. Four clocks. And a young typist, Sheila Webb, who has been summoned to the house for a job nobody seems to know anything about. The crime scene looks deliberately impossible, a stage set arranged for maximum confusion, and that is exactly what makes Poirot suspicious. The more elaborate the staging, the simpler the truth underneath.

Poirot goes to Dover at the request of the local police and walks into a case where nothing quite fits. The dead man has no name. The people around the case are a curious collection: Annabel Larkin, Fiona Hanbury, Lt Colin Race, Sven Hjerson, Mrs Swinburne, Nora Brent, Miss Martindale and Miss Pebmarsh, the blind woman whose house holds the body. Each adds a detail, and the details refuse to add up. Poirot is convinced the elaborate set-up is hiding a plain solution, and he is right to trust that instinct.

Stewart Harcourt wrote the adaptation with Christie, and Charlie Palmer directed. Anna Massey is memorable as Miss Pebmarsh; Jaime Winstone plays Sheila Webb, with Olivia Grant as Annabel Larkin, Anna Skellern as Fiona Hanbury, Tom Burke as Lt Colin Race, Andrew Havill as Sven Hjerson, Victoria Wicks as Mrs Swinburne, Sinéad Keenan as Nora Brent and Lesley Sharp as Miss Martindale.

The title is the clue, and the fun is in watching Poirot refuse to be impressed by the clockwork. Everyone at the edges of the case has a reason to keep the story complicated. Poirot's whole method is the opposite: strip away the staging and look at what is actually in front of him. The solution, when it comes, is a proper surprise, which is saying something for a case that announces its own gimmick in the title. Dover suits the case: a town built on people coming and going, where a stranger can turn up dead without anyone owing him a history.