A retired police superintendent calls on Hercule Poirot with a confession of doubt. He led the investigation into the killing of Mrs McGinty, an elderly charwoman bludgeoned in the quiet village of Broadhinny, and the evidence pointed squarely at her dull, friendless lodger, James Bentley. A jury convicted the man, and his execution is only weeks away, yet the superintendent cannot shake the conviction that the case is wrong. Poirot, persuaded that an innocent life hangs in the balance, takes lodgings in Broadhinny and begins to sift through the lives of its residents. He finds a village full of polite surfaces and buried histories: amiable couples, an ambitious young playwright, watchful wives, and neighbours who would rather the past stayed quiet. The trail leads back to an old newspaper and a half-forgotten article about women once entangled in notorious crimes, suggesting that something committed years earlier reached forward to silence a woman who saw too much. As Poirot questions and observes, the crime novelist Ariadne Oliver arrives, wrestling comically with a stage adaptation of her own work, and her presence sharpens the book's wit even as the danger deepens. With time running out for Bentley, Poirot must read the small, human details others overlook and decide which respectable face conceals a murderer.
