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Dive into the breathtaking psychological drama of Thérèse Humbert, the most brilliant female con artist of the 19th century. For over twenty years, this simple peasant girl from the French provinces held the entire financial and political elite of Paris under her complete control. Ministers, judges, and cynical billionaires fawned over her, offering millions in exchange for a single smile. They all believed in her grand illusion—a massive, locked steel safe on the Avenue de la Grande-Armée, supposedly holding a 100-million-franc inheritance from an American tycoon.

Hercule Poirot and his trusted friend, Captain Hastings, are on vacation at a luxurious hotel in Brighton. However, their elegant evening is interrupted by a scandal: a priceless pearl necklace disappears from a locked box in the room of a wealthy guest, Mrs. Opalsen. The maids fall under suspicion, the police are stumped, and the suspects swear their innocence. Will the great Belgian detective, using his famous "little gray cells," be able to unravel this perfect criminal plan and find the real thieves?

The plot takes the listener to a remote trading station off the coast of West Africa. On a lonely tropical island shrouded in poisonous marsh fogs and miasma, the night watchmen of a cooperage building begin to vanish without a trace. The superstitious local natives flee in terror, whispering about a mysterious and malevolent fiend that claims a man every third night. Captain Meldrum, the owner of the visiting yacht Gamecock, and the fearless Doctor Severall decide to spend the night in the empty cooperage to unravel this dark mystery. But are they prepared for what the swollen, muddy river truly hides?

"We had lightly and flippantly approached the most real and august of sacraments, that communion with the dead... But curiosity and levity can call up forces over which you have no control."