Holidaying in Jerusalem, Poirot overhears Raymond Boynton telling his sister: 'You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?' Their stepmother, Mrs. Boynton, is a sadistic tyrant who dominates all the younger members of her family, and who attracts the strong dislike of a group of people outside the immediate family. But when she is found dead, Hercule Poirot proposes to solve the case in twenty-four hours, even though he has no way of even proving whether it was murder