The Augean Stables

Hercule Poirot is asked to help the prime minister, Edward Ferrier, whose predecessor in the role was his father-in-law John Hammett, now Lord Cornworthy. Hammett was considered to be an exemplary politician, both honest and honourable. However, privately he was involved in chicanery, dishonest share-dealing, and misusing party funds. These revelations came as a shock to Ferrier, who forced Hammett to resign on the grounds of ill-health and then assumed the post himself. The revelations are about to be revealed to the public by a tabloid newspaper, The X-Ray News, just as Ferrier is attempting to clean up public life.

Poirot is uninterested until the Home Secretary, Sir George Conway, uses the phrase 'The Augean Stables', at which point he agrees to assist. Poirot visits Percy Perry, the editor of The X-Ray News. Poirot has heard that Perry previously accepted money for not printing stories. On this occasion, however, Perry refuses money and says he will publish.

Soon afterwards, another series of reports are published in the press, hinting at various sex scandals implicating Ferrier's wife, Dagmar. These stories appear in The X-Ray News, which is sued for libel by Mrs Ferrier. The prosecution's first witness, the Bishop of Northumbria, swears that Mrs Ferrier was at his palace on the dates mentioned by the newspaper. The second witness, Thelma Anderson, states that she was approached by a man who said he worked for The X-Ray News, and who employed her to impersonate Mrs Ferrier. She was then photographed in various compromising situations.

Mrs Ferrier wins her libel case and, in doing so, leads the public to assume that the rumours about Hammett were also fabricated. Poirot reveals to an astonished Ferrier that the idea to use Thelma Anderson was his and that Dagmar agreed to the plan. The idea came from Alexandre Dumas' novel The Queen's Necklace, but the real inspiration was 'The Augean Stables' when Hercules uses a force of nature – in his case a river – to clean out the stables. Poirot used sex as the force of nature, first blackening Mrs Ferrier's name and then clearing her in a public fashion, resulting in a wave of sympathy which also reflected well on her father and destroyed The X-Ray News.