Ariadne Oliver is at a Halloween party in a local village, Woodleigh Commons, when the horrifying happens and one of the children is found murdered. Oliver brings in Poirot to investigate. Judith Butler is Ariadne's friend, and she has a daughter Miranda. The party takes place in the manor house, called Apple Trees, owned by the local matriarch, Mrs Drake, who is widowed. Miranda's best friend is Joyce Reynolds, about 14 years old, who isn't well liked and notorious for telling stories. At the party, Joyce boasts that she had seen a murder committed once years ago. Later, this same Joyce is found drowned by the apple bobbing tub.
While the police dismiss it as a random stranger, Mrs Oliver is convinced that the murder is related to that earlier statement about witnessing a murder. This is what she brings to Poirot. Joyce has an older brother, Leopold and lives with her mother Mrs Reynolds. Leopold in particular is presented as a strange young man. In addition to the other children, there is also a gardener named Michael Garfield, who works on a celebrated garden in the area and he himself is a famous landscape architect.
Poirot picks up the thread of the witnessed murder, and in speaking to the village witch, learns that there have been three murders that have happened in the village in the past 5 years that could possibly fit the description of something that a child could have witnessed. The result was three possibilities: Olga, the Au pair from Czechoslovakia, Lesley Ferrier, a lawyer's apprentice clerk, and Brenda who was the companion of the church organist.
Ariadne Oliver remembers that during the party, she had come across Mrs. Drake, who had seemed startled and had dropped a vase of flowers and shattered it, splashing water everywhere.
Eventually, Poirot dismisses the death of Brenda as being a true suicide, when the organist reveals that the two of them were lovers, and Brenda left a suicide note which she concealed. However, an additional murder occurs, that of the brother Leopold.
In the end, Poirot reveals that first, it was Rowena Drake with her lover Michael Garfield who murdered Rowena's husband by running him over with a car. Then, Rowena poisoned Madame Llewellen-Smythe so that her fortune would come to Rowena. But instead, the old lady suspected something and changed her will to leave everything to Olga the companion. However, Rowena hired Leslie Ferrier to create a forged copy of the changed will so that the forgery would be detected and discredited. However, Leslie kept the original copy, and began blackmailing Rowena, so she murdered him.
In the mean time, the last piece of the puzzle, the loose end is Olga Seminoff. Rowena murders her as well, and gives the body to Michael Garfield to dispose of in his garden. This burying of the body is what Miranda observes, but keeps a secret for many years, until she shares it with Joyce Reynolds. When Joyce blurts it out for attention at Rowena's own party, she can't take a chance, and murders Joyce.
While she thinks herself safe, Joyce's brother Leopold saw the two of them, Joyce and Rowena, go into the library and Leopold confronts Rowena. She appears to buy him off with a new watch, but eventually Rowena must kill him too, drowning him in the lake. This brings the total deaths for which she was responsible to six.
Eventually, Michael tried to finish what he had started with Olga, to silence the only witness to her murder. Without Miranda's testimony, there was nothing tying him to any of the crimes, which could all be lain at the feet of Rowena. So he lured Miranda, his daughter, to the garden and tried to poison her, until Poirot intervened and he was arrested by the police.
1. The Doctor.
2. The Energetic Young Woman. Judith Butler, the mother of Miranda, is presented as a single young mother who is out to find the best for her daughter.
3. The Cloud-headed Girl. Edmund is presented as an odd child. Once he jokes that others say he is overcome with morbid fascination. His mother degrades him by saying that there is no longer a man about the house. Rather than being unpleasant, however, Edmund seem more to struggle to understand his place in the family and in the village. Whereas Frankie was striving to become an adult, through all the wrong means, Edmund was holding on to childish philosophies. He is dominated and henpecked by both Frankie and his mother
4. The Temptrix. There is some effort to make Frankie Drake into an early temptrix, but it is mild. She smokes and drinks, and has boyfriends, and certainly she was passionate about her crush on Leslie Farrier, before her mother ended it. But she doesn't seem to be twistedly manipulative in the way that the true temptress must be. If she had remained under the influence of her mother, she would have turned into one, but we get the sense that she has been given a chance to choose another path.
5. The Young Specialist. The young scientist in this case is Michael Garfield, who, despite being the murder and an amoral predator is also apparently a wizard with constructing a garden.
6. The Housekeeper.
6.5. The Maid.
7. The Industrialist.
8. The Legal Mind. The solicitor, Mr. Fullerton, spends considerable time explaining and exploring the will of old Mrs. Llewellen-Smythe and Olga, as well as the details of his clerk, Lesley
9. The Efficient Professional. The law clerk Lesley Ferrier was a competent professional, "He had his points, handled clients well."
10. The Rake. Michael Garfield is presented as the sequential philanderer, flirting with Frankie, seducing the young Mrs. Drake for her money, but also Judith Butler 14 years ago to father Miranda, and at the end is seducing Miranda herself into committing suicide, unsuccessfully as it turns out.
11. The Rival. In this story, Joyce is the rival for Miranda's beautiful Daughter persona. Both girls are about the same age; neither has a father; both are living in slightly constrained circumstances. While Miranda is the first born and the apple of her mother's eye, Joyce is the second child and struggles for attention against the backdrop of the village. Joyce competes with Miranda by stealing her story and telling it as her own. Both are the victims of a murder attempt. But while Joyce is remembered with annoyance, Miranda is pictured as the fragile and tragic hero in a gothic horror novel. And Joyce, as a true Rival, is not quite as lovely, not quite as charming, not quite as pleasant to be around.
12. The Daughter. Joyce and Miranda are both candidates here, (in a story full of children). But it is Miranda who is presented as an angel, and has personal moments with Poirot and Ariadne. Typically, it is the Daughter who meets a tragic end, as Miranda almost does in the last act, but is saved through Poirot's heroic intervention.
13. The Vicar. The vicar, Reverend Cottrell, in this story arranges for impoverished girls from Old Europe (Czechoslovakia) to work in Britain as maids and become exposed to a modern society. Olga is one of these. The vicar seems to be constantly muttering about not having enough money, but it doesn't seem to add anything to the story.
14. The Politician.
15. The Overseas Connection. Olga, from the Czech republic, is considered an Outsider. She is a foreigner and not truly one of the village. The comment is made several times, even to Poirot, who is also a foreigner. As such she is not trusted, not treated with respect, and very little effort is made to find her after she disappears. When she is cheated out of her inheritance, no one stands up for her. Poirot remarks that she is without a friend. An odd final element is that Garfield has been on a trip to Athens, from which he has only just returned.
16. The Loving/Lonely Wife.
17. The Batty Eccentric. The village witch makes another appearance as the batty eccentric in the form of Mrs. Goodbody, who everyone dismisses. Poirot treats her with more respect and receives vital information from her, implying that she can be very lucid when she chooses to be.
18. The Cantankerous Old Woman/ Cruel Old Man. We only get hints of this character in the form of Old Madam Lewellen-Smythe, who dislikes all her family and leaves her vast fortune in her will to the hired companion, ostensibly turning her own daughter and grandchildren out into the streets. "She was always snapping at you, Francis." "She thought you were a sniveling little mommy's boy"
19. The Social Outcast.
Tropes
A. The Time Gap. The time gap was obvious in this one, but not as large. Poirot goes looking back in the past of the murder victim, which is only about 5 years, since the girl is maybe 13 or 14. And so we delve into Olga, the au pair, and the clerk, and the old lady - things relatively recent in the village's memory.
B. The Ominous Event. Again, Christie gives us a new take on the trope. The event was a series of murders in the village, all seemingly unrelated and yet all happening relatively close together, giving everyone a feeling of unease. The old lady died, Olga appeared to have forged the will, leaving everything to herself, and then Olga disappeared and no one knew exactly what happened to her, including her family back in Sweden. That was the key event that led to everything that happened since that time.
C. The Obscure Relationship. It turned out that Miranda Butler was actually the daughter of Michael Garfield, who tried to murder her at the climactic ending, her mother having had an affair with Garfield in the pre-gap time.
D. The Convoluted Will. The old lady Llewellen-Smythe took on a companion from overseas to take care of her in her old age. When the old lady died, she changed her will to leave everything to Olga, disinheriting her own children, whom she disliked. In order to discredit that will, the corrupt law clerk produced an obvious forged copy that was instantly rejected and Olga was dismissed in shame. But the truth was that there was a new will, and Olga was favored in it.
