This is the very first Poirot/Hastings story. Set in 1916, we meet Captain Hastings as he is invalided out of the Great War and goes to convalesce at Styles Court, the family home of his great friend, John Cavendish. By an extraordinary coincidence, billeted in the village is a brilliant little retired detective with an egg-shaped head, who made a considerable impression on the Captain when he was in Belgium. Styles is not a happy household and in the blistering summer heat, tensions mount.

Father Gorman is called to a dingy rooming house to see a woman who, before she dies, confesses a bizarre tale to him. Leaving the house he is followed but, in the fog, a fatal blow is struck. Nine names on a piece of paper found in the dead priest's shoe is recovered. The clue leads Mark Easterbrook, a historian, to The Pale Horse Inn, home of three women: a psychic, a medium and a witch.

Polina Nazarova is a soprano whose past is dangerously entangled with the present. Given the opportunity to sing her Tosca opposite the arrogant and cruel Andre Breon, it seems that her desire for revenge may prove irresistible.

War-wounded sailor Dickie Carpenter is haunted by strange visitations from a ghostly woman. When his friend Robert tries to solve the mystery, though, he ultimately has to fight his own terrifying battle between love and death.

When Alex and Terry set up their own e-commerce company in Philomel Cottage, everything looks rosy until money goes missing from Alex's account. Soon she is questioning her partner - and, indeed, the cottage itself….