- Poirot becomes a criminal himself when he agrees to help a beautiful woman recover a letter written in her youth that is being used to blackmail her.
- Poirot despairs at the lack of crime - and work - concluding that he, Hercule Poirot, has scared off the criminal classes. His mood brightens when Lady Millicent Castle-Vaughn - the veiled Lady of the title - asks him to recover from her blackmailer some indiscreet letters written in her youth. Unable to convince the man to reduce the amount asked for, Poirot decides to take matters into his own hands and steal them. As Poirot and Hastings learn however, not all is as it seems, starting with Lady Millicent.—garykmcd
- Hercule Poirot is approached by a woman in a veil, seeking his help. She is Lady Millicent and she is being blackmailed by a Mr Lavington over a love letter she wrote as a 16-year-old. After confronting Mr Lavington and achieving nothing, Poirot resolves to break into Mr Lavington's house and steal the letter. He and Hastings break in, but Poirot is caught (and Hastings escapes). When Japp finds Poirot in jail, he mentions that Lavington was murdered several days earlier. In a seemingly unrelated case, the police are on the lookout for jewels that were stolen from a high street jeweller.—grantss
- A mysterious veiled lady visits Poirot as he's out for a walk. She doesn't leave any name but she tells Miss Lemon she will wait for Poirot at the Athena Hotel. When Poirot and Hasting finally arrive at the Hotel and meet the mysterious lady, she tells them her name is Lady Millicent. She is about to marry a famous man but somebody blackmails her. A man has a letter she wrote when she was younger and that could ruin her reputation. The blackmailer, named Lavington, visits Poirot and tells him that, if he doesn't receive 18.000 £ before the next Tuesday evening, the letter will be delivered to Lady Millicent's husband-to-be.—cel_d
- Poirot takes on the role of a burglar to recover the letter for the veiled lady...but is the letter really what she wanted, or the mysterious Chinese puzzle box that holds the letter? And what of the missing Englishman in Amsterdam, Japp's problem with a jewelery theft last week, Poirot's boredom, and his thoughts of how successful he would be as a criminal?—Spirit
- Poirot tells Hastings that the criminals of England fear him too much, so he has no cases. Japp describes a recent theft from a jeweler's shop window in Bond Street. The perpetrator was arrested on the spot, yet he had paste copies of the six stolen stones on him, having immediately passed the real jewels to an accomplice. Poirot wonders with Hastings what it would be like to be a perpetrator of a crime, for once. Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) is Poirot's secretary.
A heavily veiled lady calls Poirot at his offices. She leaves a message for Poirot to meet her at the Athena hotel but doesn't leave her name or her room number. Poirot & Hastings meet a heavily veiled lady in the lobby of the Athena hotel. She is Lady Millicent Castle Vaughan (Frances Barber) whose engagement to the Duke of Southshire was recently announced. At age sixteen she wrote a letter to a soldier; this letter would surely anger her fiance, and it is held by Mr. Lavington (Terence Harvey). He is demanding twenty thousand pounds for its return, a sum she cannot afford (she barely has the means to raise even one thousand pounds). She went to Lavington's house in Wimbledon to plead with him. He showed her the letter in a Chinese puzzle box that he keeps in a place she will never find. Lavington calls on Poirot at his invitation but laughs at his request to return the letter (Poirot offers a sum of 5000 Pounds for his consideration). He tells Poirot that he is leaving for Paris and expects to be paid when he returns the following week or he releases the letter to the Duke.
Poirot goes to Lavington's house twice the next day. He calls there in the morning (Mrs Godber (Carole Hayman) is the house keeper. Poirot claims that Lavington gave him the instructions to change the locks before he left for Paris, and must have forgotten to tell Mrs Godber), dressed as a man hired to affix burglar-proof locks on the window. He saws through the sash latch of one window for use by him and Hastings that night. After a long search, Poirot finds the box hidden in a hollowed log of wood at the bottom of a small wood pile in the kitchen. Unknown to both Hastings and Poirot, Mrs Godber was sleeping in the house that night and when she hears noises, she calls up the police. The police show up & Poirot is arrested for burglary, while Hastings escapes with the Chinese box. Japp (Philip Jackson) bails him out & informs him Lavington was killed in Amsterdam the previous week.
The next day Lady Millicent calls for the letter. They meet at the museum. She asks for the puzzle box as a souvenir, but Poirot prevents her from taking it. He shows that the box holds the six missing jewels from the Bond Street robbery. Japp appears from another room and recognizes the lady as "Gertie", an accomplice of Lavington, whose real name was Reed. Reed was killed in Holland a few days before, for this double-cross of his gang. The gang members decided to use Poirot to retrieve it as they could not find it themselves. Japp arrests her. Poirot tells Hastings that it was the cheap shoes she was wearing that made him suspect that she was not who she claimed to be. Poirot says that not only do the criminals of England know him, but they also try to use him when their own efforts come to nothing.
The gang member who posed as Lavington (his real name is Joey) was witnessing the proceedings from a distance and tells 2 beats cops that Japp is a museum thief. The cops arrest Japp, and by the time his identity is established, Gertie and Joey use the distraction to escape with the jewels. Poirot and Japp manage to stop the perpetrators from escaping the museum.
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