"How dare you? How dare you send me such a letter?"Returning home one day, Hercule Poirot finds a furious woman waiting outside his front door. She demands to know why Poirot has sent her a letter accusing her of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, a man she has neither heard of nor ever met. Poirot has also never heard of Pandy, and he has certainly accused nobody of his murder. Shaken, he goes inside, only to find that he has a visitor waiting for him--a man who claims to have received a nearly identical letter from Poirot that morning.Poirot wonders how many more letters of this sort have been sent in his name. . . . Who sent them, and why? It is precisely because he is the great Hercule Poirot that he would never knowingly accuse an innocent person of a crime. Someone is trying to make mischief and wants Poirot involved. So who is Barnabas Pandy? Is he even dead, and if so, was he murdered? Can Poirot find the missing link and discover the truth without putting more lives in danger?With the help of his little gray cells and the assistance of Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard, Poirot must solve an elaborate puzzle involving a tangled web of relationships, scandalous secrets, and past misdeeds.