The Adventure of the Clapham Cook Poirot is not interested in investigating some of the cases which appear in the newspapers and which Hastings tries to bring to his attention. These include a bank clerk who disappears with fifty thousand pounds of securities, a suicidal man and a missing typist. He is put on the spot though when visited by a Mrs Todd who is determined that he investigate her missing cook. With some humour, and to avoid an argument, he agrees to take on the trivial case. Eliza Dunn, a middle-aged woman, walked out of her job and the Todd's house in Clapham two days ago without working her notice and has not communicated with her employer since, except for sending for her trunk that day. Interviewing the maid in the house, Poirot finds out that the trunk was already packed, meaning that Eliza had planned to leave even though her departure was swift. The other occupants of the house are Mr Todd, who works in the city, and their lodger, Mr Simpson, who works in! the same bank at which Mr Davis worked. Struck by this coincidence as he is, Poirot cannot see a connection between an absconding bank clerk and a missing cook. Poirot places advertisements in the newspaper enquiring as to the whereabouts of Eliza and several days later he is successful in locating her when she visits Poirot's rooms. She tells him a story of having come into a legacy of a house in Carlisle and an income of three hundred pounds a year, dependent upon her taking up the offer and ...
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