Appointment with Death

The novel opens as the family and the victim are introduced through the perspective of newly qualified Dr Sarah King and Dr Gerard, who discuss the behaviour of the family. Mrs Boynton is sadistic and domineering, behaviours which she may have carried over from her original profession of prison warden - or, rather, she became a wardress because she enjoyed having power over people. She has mentally and psychologically tortured her three stepchildren, Lennox, Carol and Raymond since they were toddlers, and carried this on to her own daughter Ginevra (Jinny). Sarah is attracted to Raymond Boynton, while Jefferson Cope admits to wanting to take Nadine Boynton away from her husband, Lennox, subtly encouraged by Mrs Boynton, in hopes of further damage to Lennox. Jefferson, however, does not really understand the extent of Mrs Boynton's sadistic plans. Having been thwarted in her desire to free the young Boyntons, Sarah confronts Mrs Boynton whose apparent reply is a strange threat: "I've never forgotten anything – not an action, not a name, not a face." When the party reaches Petra, Mrs Boynton uncharacteristically sends her family away from her for a period. Later, she is found dead with a needle puncture in her wrist. Before her death is discovered, Raymond, having fallen in love with Sarah, and Lennox, finally realising he could lose Nadine, separately decide to tell their mother they are leaving. Carol, who with Raymond, had talked of trying to release the whole family, and Jinny, who is on the verge of a breakdown, also had motives for killing Mrs Boynton. Other visitors to Petra, including Lady Westholme and Miss Pierce have witnessed some of the events, and may have evidence to be ferreted out by Poirot.

Poirot claims that he can solve the mystery within twenty-four hours simply by interviewing the suspects. During these interviews he establishes a timeline that seems impossible: Sarah King places the time of death considerably before the times at which various of the family members claim last to have seen the victim alive. Attention is focused on a hypodermic syringe that has seemingly been stolen from Dr Gerard's tent and later replaced. The poison administered to the victim is believed to be digitoxin, something that she already took medicinally.

Poirot then calls for a meeting and explains how each member of the family has, in turn, discovered Mrs Boynton to be dead and, suspecting another family member, failed to report the fact. None of the family would have needed to murder the victim with a hypodermic, since an overdose could have been administered much more effectively in her medicine, to which they had access. This places the suspicion on one of the outsiders.

The murderer is revealed to be Lady Westholme who, prior to her marriage, had been incarcerated in the prison in which the victim was once a warden. It was not to Sarah, but to Lady Westholme standing behind her, that Mrs Boynton had addressed that peculiar threat; the temptation to acquire a new subject to torture had been too great for her to resist. Lady Westholme feared that Mrs Boynton would divulge her criminal past and disrupt her political career. Disguised as an Arab servant, she had committed the murder and then relied upon the suggestibility of Miss Pierce to lay two pieces of misdirection that had concealed her role in the murder. Lady Westholme, eavesdropping on Poirot's summation from an adjoining room, overhears that her crime is about to be revealed to the world and commits suicide with a revolver she carried when travelling. The family, free at last, take up happier lives: Sarah marries Raymond; Carol marries Jefferson; and Ginevra takes up a successful career as a stage actress and marries Dr Gerard.