Agatha Christie's Poirot

When a jury convicts James Bentley for the murder of his landlady, even the police superintendent believes they’ve got the wrong man. At the superintendent’s behest, Hercule Poirot begins a search for new evidence. He bumps into an old friend, mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, who lends her woman’s intuition to the investigation.

At the Meadowbank School, Miss Bulstrode counts girls from England’s finest families among her young charges. And she treats them all as equals even the royalty, like Princess Shaista of Ramat, a political refugee under constant threat from revolutionaries in her country.
Yet, to the headmistress’s friend Hercule Poirot, the school seems a world in microcosm, full of “hopes, dreams, fears, and secrets.”

Distressed young heiress Norma Restarick comes to see Hercule Poirot about “a murder she might have committed.” The detective consults an old acquaintance, crime novelist Ariadne Oliver, who lives in the same building as the young woman and her two roommates. When Norma’s childhood nanny is found dead, apparently by suicide, Poirot believes he has identified the victim. Next he must deduce the killer, while Norma’s family fears for her sanity.

Hercule Poirot accompanies an archaeological expedition searching for the skull of John the Baptist in the Syrian Desert.
What the team actually finds is a more recent corpse: the body of Lady Boynton, wife of expedition leader Lord Boynton. The woman had made many enemies during her life, and Poirot has no shortage of suspects. He digs through layers of history to discover who had motive enough to kill.