 Just weeks after marrying a young widowed actress, Gordon Cloade, a rich businessman, is instantly killed in a gas explosion in his flat. Out of the inferno, which also killed several other people in his apartment building, however miraculously walks his 23-year-old actress wife Rosaleen almost unharmed, having been in the cellar at the time of the explosion with her brother David Hunter, choosing wine. After Gordon Cloade s death, his young widow is left in sole possession of her late husband s fortune and - in contrast to her husband who always was very generous with his money to the rest of his family - she totally withholds it from the other Cloades. Finding the sudden lack of funds very frustrating, the Cloades decide to employ detective Hercule Poirot in order to investigate the on-going rumours that Rosaleen s first husband Robert Underhay, who years ago mysteriously disappeared into the African jungle, might not be dead after all.