Trama

Poirot probes the disappearance of a wealthy woman's cook, and soon uncovers an elaborate plot to hide an ever darker crime.

Poirot is approached by a Mrs. Todd, whose cook, Eliza Dunn, has suddenly disappeared. Poirot manages to track down the cook , and she tells him that a stranger, acting for a law firm, told her that she had inherited a property in the North of England but she had to go there immediately. Her heavy trunk was called for but it was deposited at the railway station, where Poirot makes an interesting discovery, connected to a recent bank robbery.—don @ minifie-1

Hercule Poirot is approached by Mrs Todd with a case. She wants Poirot to investigate the disappearance of her cook, Eliza Dunn. To Poirot it looks like nothing more than a domestic leaving her employer but he reluctantly takes the case. He and Captain Hastings set out to the Todd household in Clapham, where nothing significant turns up. Through advertisements in newspapers they track down Eliza Dunn. The story behind her departure piques Poirot's interest and he starts to think that something far more sinister may be afoot.—grantss

Hercule Poirot is asked to investigate a most peculiar case: Mrs. Todd asks him to locate her cook. The previous Wednesday, Eliza Dunn left the Todd residence as she does every week to go to the market and simply didn't return. While concerned that accepting such a menial task as looking for a missing cook might adversely affect his reputation, Poirot is nonetheless fascinated by the case and accepts. When he does finally locate Mrs. Dunn, she tells him strange tale of an inheritance dependent on her not being in service. Poirot soon focuses on a lodger in the Todd household, Arthur Simpson, a bank employee.—garykmcd

Set in London in 1930's. Poirot (David Suchet) is a Belgian, with Secretary Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) & associate Dr Hastings (Hugh Fraser). His police compatriot is Chief Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson) who works with Poirot on several cases & respects his powers deeply.

Poirot is not interested in investigating some of the cases which appear in the newspapers and which Hastings tries to bring to his attention. These include a bank clerk (Mr. Davis) who disappears with fifty thousand pounds of securities, a suicidal man, and a missing typist. He is put on the spot though when visited by a Mrs Todd (Brigit Forsyth) who is determined that he investigate her missing cook. Challenged, he decides, with some humor and to avoid an argument, to take the seemingly trivial case.

Eliza Dunn (Freda Dowie), a middle-aged woman, walked out of her job and the Todd's house in Clapham two days ago without working her notice and has not communicated with her employer since, except for sending for her trunk that day. Interviewing the maid in the house, Poirot finds out that the trunk was already packed, meaning that Eliza had planned to leave even though her departure was swift. The other occupants of the house are Mr Todd (Antony Carrick), who works in the city, and their lodger, Mr Simpson (Dermot Crowley), who works in the same bank at which Mr Davis worked.

Struck by this coincidence as he is, Poirot cannot see a connection between an absconding bank clerk and a missing cook. Poirot places advertisements in the newspaper inquiring as to the whereabouts of Eliza and several days later he is successful in locating her when she visits Poirot's rooms.

She tells him a story of having come into a legacy of a house in Carlisle and an income of three hundred pounds a year, dependent upon her taking up the offer and immediately leaving domestic service. This legacy was communicated to her by a man who approached her in the street as she was returning to the Todd's house one night, the man supposedly having come from there to see her. The money came from a friend of her late grandmother who had settled in Australia and married a wealthy settler.

Eliza had immediately taken the train north and a couple of days later received her belongings from Clapham, although wrapped in paper parcels and not in her old trunk, which she supposes had been kept behind by Mrs Todd in a fit of pique.

Poirot rushes back to Clapham with Hastings and explains matters on the way. Simpson knew what his colleague Davis was up to at the bank. He killed the man for the securities and needed an old, inconspicuous trunk in which to hide the body and that meant diverting Eliza out of the way. It was Simpson in disguise who had approached her in the street.

On arriving at Clapham, Simpson has already disappeared but is traced to an ocean liner bound for the Venezuela. The trunk with Davis's body inside is located at a Glasgow railway station. Poirot views the link between a disappearing cook and a murder to be one of his most interesting cases, and he frames the check sent by Mr. Todd for his consulting fee as a reminder of it.