I didn't really like this, to me it was confusing. So many characters with barely any introduction.
It starts with a big party of some kind, with undercover agents and a chief inspector that is not Japp, and of course Poirot.
They are waiting for a thief to show up so they can catch him... A girl plays the bait with her big jewels, she's afraid but Poirot promises that she'll be safe.
This is enough for us to understand that she'll meet a terrible end, and sure enough she dies, along with a female cop and a male sergeant, I think, and a painting is also stolen.
We move three months later. Poirot still feels guilty of course. Depressed. When his driver cries because of a maid he loved but went away following her madam, a famous ballerina, to Switzerland, he promises to find her and bring her here if she agrees.
He goes to Switzerland and he's told that the murderer will also be there.
He meets a young man that was also at the party. I think he's the one that fell in love with the girl abused by her husband. From outside her door, he hears a drunkman shouting, he enters to stop him but apparently her mother killed Clayton and threw his body out the window and down the mountain. Mom and daughter are scared, and he thinks of paying the hotel for its silence, or something like that, saying "this is not England, the solution is probably a bribe"... sigh, they are all righteous in England right? A lot of people in the world can vouch for that, or at least what's left of those people now...
Anyway. Later he will confess to Poirot to killing Clayton, but Poirot doesn't believe him. He thinks the guy has integrity and is honourable, he once took the blame for his minister and now he does the same for the girl, but Poirot says that they are actually sisters who staged it all to get his money, and he guesses how it went exactly, saying that Clayton never existed and the older sister impersonated him (because women wear their clothes with the buttons right over left while men left over right...).
Poirot is told that the girl with the ballerina is not the maid he's looking for.
Poirot meets his Countess, that countess, and apparently she has a daughter, a criminologist, very cold and sharp. The countess gives him a gift, a pair of precious cufflinks!
There's an avalanche so they are all stuck at the hotel.
He asks the ballerina about the maid, she says that Nita died. This ballerina spends her time in her bed as if she was ill, with a doctor controlling her life, but Poirot tells her that she's not ill.
The countess' daughter is called Miss Cunningham, and now she yells saying that she was attacked in her room but she's unharmed, and yet her dog did nothing.
The two sisters tell Poirot that he once did nothing to get the countess arrested, and now he should do the same for them or there will be extreme measures, but he refuses to be pressed.
He gets attacked at night, a guy with moustache helps him shooting the intruder who escapes thru the window. It was the 'cop' posing as waiter, he says that he's Marascope (or something, the thief-murderer he's looking for) then he falls down the mountain.
Poirot thought that he was the undercover cop, while actually it's the guy with the moustache.
Poirot pretends to be able to repair a radio to talk to the police and he says that the road will be cleared soon.
He reunites everyone in the usual scene where he explains everything. He talks about his 'labours': first, a stolen painting has been covered and hung on the wall; the ballerina has the jewels that the murdered girl was wearing, and she IS Nita, the countess wears the brooch of the older sister , "she steals so rarely these days"...
The young man says that the sisters are gone but actually he hid them. Poirot speaks harshly to them that they prey on people's goodness.
Poirot says that Miss Cunninghan was not really attacked, she is the real Marascope. She asked the ballerina to keep the jewels with an excuse. Her accomplice is dr Lutz. She smiled eerily then drew a gun that was in her mom's bag, and Lutz too, and the cop too of course.
She doesn't shoot her mom but she turns and the young guy knocks her out... what a stupid ending.
The ending: the Miss tells him that he's so vain and smug and yet he failed the young girl and she also tells him "I shall find you" and he replies "I shall not hide"
Of course Poirot can't spare her, he spared the countess but that was different, this girl is soulless and bloody and manipulative and utterly cruel.
At the very end, Poirot takes Nita to the driver as promised. Poirot smiles to him, wearing the countess' cufflinks.
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