Peril at End House - Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot | Radio Drama

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"Peril at End House" is a detective novel by Agatha Christie featuring her famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Set in the tranquil Cornish Riviera, Poirot and his companion Arthur Hastings vacation where they meet Magdala "Nick" Buckley, the young and lively owner of End House. Despite her perilous encounters with death, including a car whose brakes fail and a falling boulder narrowly missing her, Nick remains cheerful. Poirot, intrigued and worried about these near-fatal incidents, senses that they might be attempts on her life rather than accidents.

Nick reveals she has survived multiple life-threatening incidents in recent days. Poirot's suspicions grow when he finds a bullet hole in Nick’s hat, confirming his fears of an ongoing threat against her. Poirot decides to stay and protect Nick while investigating who among her circle, including her cousin Charles Vyse, her friends Freddie Rice and Jim Lazarus, and the mysterious tenants Mr. and Mrs. Croft, might have a motive to harm her.

The situation escalates when Nick's cousin, Maggie, who is invited by Poirot to support Nick, is murdered at a party, wearing Nick's shawl—a mix-up Poirot suspects was meant to confuse her identity with Nick’s. The complexity deepens when it’s revealed Maggie was to inherit from Nick, redirecting suspicions.

Through clever deception and meticulous investigation, Poirot uncovers that Nick herself had engineered the attempts on her life to claim her fiancé Michael Seton’s inheritance, believing wrongly that any subsequent investigation would cease once she appeared to be a victim. Seton, a wealthy pilot believed dead, was revealed to have been engaged not to Nick but to Maggie, making her the rightful heir.

The novel concludes with Poirot exposing Nick’s deceptions. She orchestrated the murder by deploying her knowledge of poisons and drugs, aided unwittingly by her friends' interactions. Nick is arrested, bringing the plot full circle with a dramatic denouement that sees justice served in Christie’s trademark style of suspense and surprise. This story not only entertains with its plot twists but also sheds light on human psychology and the depths of deceit one can stoop to out of greed.