Present at The Flood

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest, and by far the most powerful, machine ever built. A project of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, its audacious purpose is to re-create, in a 16.5-mile-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss countryside, the immensely hot and dense conditions that existed some 13.7 billion years ago within the first trillionth of a second after the fiery birth of our universe.

Part of the new look for Hercule Poirot titles for the 21st century. Read by Hugh Fraser, who plays Captain Hastings in the popular TV series. A few weeks after marrying an attractive young widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterwards, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by 'spirits' that Mrs Underhay's first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world. Yet what mystifies Poirot most is the woman's true motive for approaching him!

Poirot visits the sleepy English village of Warmsley Vale to check into the background of Gordon Cloade, supposedly a victim of the London Blitz. He had married an attractive young widow, now the sole possessor of the Cloade family fortune. The deceased's sister-in-law told Poirot that "spirits" informed her that the widow's first husband is still among the living. This raises suspicions about Cloade's death.