Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings star in it. The storey is set in northern France, where Poirot is pitted against a rival from the Paris Sûreté. Poirot's extensive memory for previous or similar crimes helps him solve the cases. Hastings falls in love in the book, a development "greatly sought on Agatha's side off Hastings to marital bliss in the Argentine."



Captain Hastings and Hercule Poirot head to Merlinville-sur-Mer, France, to meet Paul Renauld, who has asked for their assistance. Local police welcome them as they arrive at his home, the Villa Genevieve, with the news that he had been found dead earlier that day. Renauld had been stabbed in the back with a knife and buried next to a local golf course in a freshly dug grave. Eloise Renauld, his wife, claimed that masked men broke into the villa at 2 a.m., tied her up, and took her husband with them. Eloise breaks down in tears when she sees her dead husband's body and inspects it.