Lord Boynton

Lord Boynton is a non-canonical character created for the 2008 ITV adaption of Appointment with Death. He is an archaeologist who is the current husband of Lady Leonora Boynton. Throughout the events in the show, he is conducting an excavation in Syria at Ain Musa searching for the skull of John the Baptist. Lord Boynton is portrayed by Tim Curry.

Unlike the other members of the Boynton family who all hate Lady Boynton, Lord Boynton actually loves her. He tells Poirot that he knows his wife is hated by many people because "like many women who know their own mind, she found it all too easy to make enemies. She did not make an enemy of me." In this adaptation, Lady Boynton is the person with all the money in the family and she is the one who funds his archaeological expeditions. Lord Boynton is, for a time, a plausible suspect in the death of Lady Boynton because he was in the camp when Lady Boynton was killed, and with her death he would have inherited her estate.

Lord Boynton is also involved in a sideplot. Towards the end of the show, a skull is found at Ain Musa and Lord Boynton actually believes it is the skull of John the Baptist. However, earlier on, Poirot had seen Leonard, Lord Boynton's son, purchasing a bag from an Arab. Poirot found the bag hidden among some digging tools. Inside was a tooth with a gold filling. During the denouement, Poirot gives the tooth to Lord Boynton. The tooth fits the skull perfectly, showing that it is of recent origin. It turns out that the skull was planted by Leonard. He explains that all Lord Boynton had spent all his life "traipsing about the Middle East" conducting dig after dig but "time after time finding absolutely nothing of significance." Leonard said he wanted this to end and so he had planted the skull free his father "of this need". At the end of the show, Lord Boynton declares that he is "cured of archaeology".