A good, complicated Poirot. Miss Amory reminded me slightly of Sayers' Dowager Duchess in the way she spoke (also Lucy Angkatell in The Hollow, come to think of it). I enjoyed the plot and the way Poirot went around asking his usual unrelated questions. Hastings was as annoying as always - while I'm quite willing to believe him as stupid as he appears in comparison to Poirot, his constant harping on how Poirot does not wander about looking for evidence gets annoying. Surely after the first couple of times he must have realised that what Poirot does works, surely at some point it must enter his head that his constant whining about Poirot's conceit (thoroughly justified, of course, both the whining and the conceit) and so on is just a waste of time. Of course, Christie's not known for her characterisation, but her intricate plots, and I have to say that it shows with Hastings.