Poirot is asked for help by a physician, Dr Charles Oldfield, who has a practice in Market Loughborough, a small village in Berkshire. His wife died just over a year ago and the malicious talk in the village is that he poisoned her. People are avoiding him and several poison pen letters have been sent to him but he can do nothing to stem this tide of ill-intentioned gossip – like the heads of the Lernaean Hydra, when one source of the gossip is cut off, another grows in its place. So, his ultimate aim is to cut the main source of the gossip, just like the hydra had been slain by cutting its vulnerable head.
