When the corpse of Mrs Boynton is found among the cliffs of Petra, Hercule Poirot remembers the words of one of her step-children: “You do see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?” In true form, Poirot gives himself 24 hours to solve the case. One of Agatha Christie’s many stories inspired by her travels in the Middle East, this one also shows a different side of Poirot. In fact when the story first appeared, serialised in the Daily Mail in 1938 under the title A Date with Death, Agatha Christie preceded it with an original piece on her relationship with her detective and how she came to create him. She also described Poirot’s key interests in this particular case: the “passion for truth” of the man who asked him to undertake the case; the technicality of the 24-hour limit; and the psychology of the motive, particularly “the strong malign personality of the dead woman”. It was adapted for film in 1988, starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot and twenty years later in 2008, David Suchet appeared in the story for Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 2006, John Moffatt reprising his role as Poirot.