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Hercule Poirot
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Poirot
First appearance	The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Last appearance	Curtain (1975)
Created by	Agatha Christie
Portrayed by	Charles Laughton Francis L. Sullivan Austin Trevor Orson Welles Harold Huber Richard Williams John Malkovich José Ferrer Martin Gabel Tony Randall Albert Finney Dudley Jones Peter Ustinov Ian Holm David Suchet John Moffatt Maurice Denham Peter Sallis Konstantin Raikin Alfred Molina Robert Powell Jason Durr Kenneth Branagh Anthony O’Donnell Shirō Itō (Takashi Akafuji) Mansai Nomura (Takeru Suguro) Tom Conti
Voiced by	Kōtarō Satomi
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Private investigator Police officer (former occupation)
Family	Jules-Louis Poirot (father) Godelieve Poirot (mother)
Religion	Catholic
Nationality	Belgian

Hercule Poirot (, ^[1]) is a fictional Belgian detective created by British writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is one of Christie’s most famous and long-running characters, appearing in 33 novels, two plays (Black Coffee and Alibi), and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.

Poirot has been portrayed on radio, in film and on television by various actors, including Austin Trevor, John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, Orson Welles, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh, and John Malkovich.

Overview[edit]

Influences[edit]

Poirot’s name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans’ Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London.^[2] Evans’ Jules Poiret «was small and rather heavyset, hardly more than five feet, but moved with his head held high. The most remarkable features of his head were the stiff military moustache. His apparel was neat to perfection, a little quaint and frankly dandified.» He was accompanied by Captain Harry Haven, who had returned to London from a Colombian business venture ended by a civil war. ^[3]

A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In An Autobiography, Christie states, «I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp».^[4] For his part, Conan Doyle acknowledged basing his detective stories on the model of Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and his anonymous narrator, and basing his character Sherlock Holmes on Joseph Bell, who in his use of «ratiocination» prefigured Poirot’s reliance on his «little grey cells».

Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason’s fictional detective Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté, who first appeared in the 1910 novel At the Villa Rose and predates the first Poirot novel by 10 years.

Christie’s Poirot was clearly the result of her early development of the detective in her first book, written in 1916 and published in 1920. Belgium’s occupation by Germany during World War I provided a plausible explanation of why such a skilled detective would be available to solve mysteries at an English country house.^[5] At the time of Christie’s writing, it was considered patriotic to express sympathy towards the Belgians,^[6] since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain’s casus belli for entering World War I, and British wartime propaganda emphasised the «Rape of Belgium».

Popularity[edit]

Poirot first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published in 1920) and exited in Curtain (published in 1975). Following the latter, Poirot was the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of The New York Times.^[7][8]

By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot «insufferable», and by 1960 she felt that he was a «detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep». Despite this, Poirot remained an exceedingly popular character with the general public. Christie later stated that she refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked.^[9]

Appearance and proclivities[edit]

Captain Arthur Hastings’s first description of Poirot:

He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.
The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police.^[5]

Agatha Christie’s initial description of Poirot in The Murder on the Orient Express:

By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young French lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man [Hercule Poirot] muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache. ^[10]

In the later books, his limp is not mentioned, suggesting it may have been a temporary wartime injury. (In Curtain, Poirot admits he was wounded when he first came to England.) Poirot has green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining «like a cat’s» when he is struck by a clever idea,^[11] and dark hair, which he dyes later in life. In Curtain, he admits to Hastings that he wears a wig and a false moustache.^[12] However, in many of his screen incarnations, he is bald or balding.

Frequent mention is made of his patent leather shoes, damage to which is frequently a source of misery for him, but comical for the reader.^[13] Poirot’s appearance, regarded as fastidious during his early career, later falls hopelessly out of fashion.^[14]

Among Poirot’s most significant personal attributes is the sensitivity of his stomach:

The plane dropped slightly. «Mon estomac,» thought Hercule Poirot, and closed his eyes determinedly.^[15]

He suffers from sea sickness,^[16] and, in Death in the Clouds, he states that his air sickness prevents him from being more alert at the time of the murder. Later in his life, we are told:

Always a man who had taken his stomach seriously, he was reaping his reward in old age. Eating was not only a physical pleasure, it was also an intellectual research.^[15]

Poirot is extremely punctual and carries a pocket watch almost to the end of his career.^[17] He is also particular about his personal finances, preferring to keep a bank balance of 444 pounds, 4 shillings, and 4 pence.^[18] Actor David Suchet, who portrayed Poirot on television, said «there’s no question he’s obsessive-compulsive».^[19] Film portrayer Kenneth Branagh said that he «enjoyed finding the sort of obsessive-compulsive» in Poirot.^[20]

As mentioned in Curtain and The Clocks, he is fond of classical music, particularly Mozart and Bach.

Methods[edit]

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based and logical detective; reflected in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of «the little grey cells» and «order and method». Hastings is irritated by the fact that Poirot sometimes conceals important details of his plans, as in The Big Four.^[21] In this novel, Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator to mislead.

In Murder on the Links, still largely dependent on clues himself, Poirot mocks a rival «bloodhound» detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues established in detective fiction (e.g., Sherlock Holmes depending on footprints, fingerprints, and cigar ash). From this point on, Poirot establishes his psychological bona fides. Rather than painstakingly examining crime scenes, he enquires into the nature of the victim or the psychology of the murderer. He predicates his actions in the later novels on his underlying assumption that particular crimes are committed by particular types of people.

Poirot focuses on getting people to talk. In the early novels, he casts himself in the role of «Papa Poirot», a benign confessor, especially to young women. In later works, Christie made a point of having Poirot supply false or misleading information about himself or his background to assist him in obtaining information.^[22] In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot speaks of a non-existent mentally disabled nephew^[23] to uncover information about homes for the mentally unfit. In Dumb Witness, Poirot invents an elderly invalid mother as a pretence to investigate local nurses. In The Big Four, Poirot pretends to have (and poses as) an identical twin brother named Achille: however, this brother was mentioned again in The Labours of Hercules.^[21]

«If I remember rightly – though my memory isn’t what it was – you also had a brother called Achille, did you not?” Poirot’s mind raced back over the details of Achille Poirot’s career. Had all that really happened? «Only for a short space of time,» he replied.^[24]

Poirot is also willing to appear more foreign or vain in an effort to make people underestimate him. He admits as much:

It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say – a foreigner – he can’t even speak English properly. … Also I boast! An Englishman he says often, «A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much.» … And so, you see, I put people off their guard.^[25]

He also has a tendency to refer to himself in the third person.^[26][27]

In later novels, Christie often uses the word mountebank when characters describe Poirot, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud.

Poirot’s investigating techniques assist him solving cases; «For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…»^[28] At the end, Poirot usually reveals his description of the sequence of events and his deductions to a room of suspects, often leading to the culprit’s apprehension.

Life[edit]

Origins[edit]

Christie was purposely vague about Poirot’s origins, as he is thought to be an elderly man even in the early novels. In An Autobiography, she admitted that she already imagined him to be an old man in 1920. At the time, however, she did not know that she would write works featuring him for decades to come.

A brief passage in The Big Four provides original information about Poirot’s birth or at least childhood in or near the town of Spa, Belgium: «But we did not go into Spa itself. We left the main road and wound into the leafy fastnesses of the hills, till we reached a little hamlet and an isolated white villa high on the hillside.»^[29] Christie strongly implies that this «quiet retreat in the Ardennes»^[30] near Spa is the location of the Poirot family home.

An alternative tradition holds that Poirot was born in the village of Ellezelles (province of Hainaut, Belgium).^[31] A few memorials dedicated to Hercule Poirot can be seen in the centre of this village. There appears to be no reference to this in Christie’s writings, but the town of Ellezelles cherishes a copy of Poirot’s birth certificate in a local memorial ‘attesting’ Poirot’s birth, naming his father and mother as Jules-Louis Poirot and Godelieve Poirot.

Christie wrote that Poirot is a Catholic by birth,^[32] but not much is described about his later religious convictions, except sporadic references to his «going to church».^[33] Christie provides little information regarding Poirot’s childhood, only mentioning in Three Act Tragedy that he comes from a large family with little wealth, and has at least one younger sister. Apart from French and English, Poirot is also fluent in German.^[34]

Policeman[edit]

Gustave … was not a policeman. I have dealt with policemen all my life and I know. He could pass as a detective to an outsider but not to a man who was a policeman himself.

— Hercule Poirot Christie 1947c

Hercule Poirot was active in the Brussels police force by 1893.^[35] Very little mention is made about this part of his life, but in «The Nemean Lion» (1939) Poirot refers to a Belgian case of his in which «a wealthy soap manufacturer … poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary». As Poirot was often misleading about his past to gain information, the truthfulness of that statement is unknown; it does, however, scare off a would-be wife-killer.

In the short story «The Chocolate Box» (1923), Poirot reveals to Captain Arthur Hastings an account of what he considers to be his only failure. Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime «innumerable» times:

I have been called in too late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been struck down with illness just as I was on the point of success.

Nevertheless, he regards the 1893 case in «The Chocolate Box»,^[36] as his only failure through his fault only. Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth. During his police career, Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof into the public below.^[37] In Lord Edgware Dies, Poirot reveals that he learned to read writing upside down during his police career. Around that time he met Xavier Bouc, director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.

Inspector Japp offers some insight into Poirot’s career with the Belgian police when introducing him to a colleague:

You’ve heard me speak of Mr Poirot? It was in 1904 he and I worked together – the Abercrombie forgery case – you remember he was run down in Brussels. Ah, those were the days Moosier. Then, do you remember «Baron» Altara? There was a pretty rogue for you! He eluded the clutches of half the police in Europe. But we nailed him in Antwerp – thanks to Mr. Poirot here.^[38]

In The Double Clue, Poirot mentions that he was Chief of Police of Brussels, until «the Great War» (World War I) forced him to leave for England.

Private detective[edit]

I had called in at my friend Poirot’s rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot. ^[39]

During World War I, Poirot left Belgium for England as a refugee, although he returned a few times. On 16 July 1916 he again met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. It is clear that Hastings and Poirot are already friends when they meet in Chapter 2 of the novel, as Hastings tells Cynthia that he has not seen him for «some years» (Agatha Christie’s Poirot has Hastings reveal that they met on a shooting case where Hastings was a suspect). Particulars such as the date of 1916 for the case and that Hastings had met Poirot in Belgium, are given in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, Chapter 1. After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service and undertook cases for the British government, including foiling the attempted abduction of the Prime Minister.^[40] Readers were told that the British authorities had learned of Poirot’s keen investigative ability from certain members of Belgium’s royal family.

After the war, Poirot became a private detective and began undertaking civilian cases. He moved into what became both his home and work address, Flat 203 at 56B Whitehaven Mansions. Hastings first visits the flat when he returns to England in June 1935 from Argentina in The A.B.C. Murders, Chapter 1. The TV programmes place this in Florin Court, Charterhouse Square, in the wrong part of London. According to Hastings, it was chosen by Poirot «entirely on account of its strict geometrical appearance and proportion» and described as the «newest type of service flat». (The Florin Court building was actually built in 1936, decades after Poirot fictionally moved in.) His first case in this period was «The Affair at the Victory Ball», which allowed Poirot to enter high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Between the world wars, Poirot travelled all over Europe and the Middle East investigating crimes and solving murders. Most of his cases occurred during this time and he was at the height of his powers at this point in his life. In The Murder on the Links, the Belgian pits his grey cells against a French murderer. In the Middle East, he solved the cases Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia with ease and even survived An Appointment with Death. As he passed through Eastern Europe on his return trip, he solved The Murder on the Orient Express. However, he did not travel to Africa or Asia, probably to avoid seasickness.

It is this villainous sea that troubles me! The mal de mer – it is horrible suffering!^[41]

It was during this time he met the Countess Vera Rossakoff, a glamorous jewel thief. The history of the countess is, like Poirot’s, steeped in mystery. She claims to have been a member of the Russian aristocracy before the Russian Revolution and suffered greatly as a result, but how much of that story is true is an open question. Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff offered wildly varying accounts of her early life. Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice.^[42]

It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the countess held for him.^[43]

Although letting the countess escape was morally questionable, it was not uncommon. In The Nemean Lion, Poirot sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, allowing her to evade prosecution by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who, Poirot discovered, had plans to commit murder. Poirot even sent Miss Carnaby two hundred pounds as a final payoff prior to the conclusion of her dog kidnapping campaign. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot allowed the murderer to escape justice through suicide and then withheld the truth to spare the feelings of the murderer’s relatives. In The Augean Stables, he helped the government to cover up vast corruption. In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot allowed the murderers to go free after discovering that twelve different people participated in the murder, each one stabbing the victim in a darkened carriage after drugging him into unconsciousness so that there was no way for anyone to definitively determine which of them actually delivered the killing blow. The victim had committed a disgusting crime which led to the deaths of at least five people, and there was no question of his guilt, but he had been acquitted in America in a miscarriage of justice. Considering it poetic justice that twelve jurors had acquitted him and twelve people had stabbed him, Poirot produced an alternative sequence of events to explain the death involving an unknown additional passenger on the train, with the medical examiner agreeing to doctor his own report to support this theory.

After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called Labours of Hercules (see next section) he very rarely went abroad during his later career. He moved into Styles Court towards the end of his life.

While Poirot was usually paid handsomely by clients, he was also known to take on cases that piqued his curiosity, although they did not pay well.

Poirot shows a love of steam trains, which Christie contrasts with Hastings’ love of autos: this is shown in The Plymouth Express, The Mystery of the Blue Train, Murder on the Orient Express, and The ABC Murders (in the TV series, steam trains are seen in nearly all of the episodes).

Retirement[edit]

That’s the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna’s farewell performance won’t be in it with yours, Poirot.^[44]

Confusion surrounds Poirot’s retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot’s private detective agency take place before his retirement to attempt to grow larger marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It has been said that the twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in «The Capture of Cerberus» of the twenty-year gap between Poirot’s previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the Labours precede the events in Roger Ackroyd, then the Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years later than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself.^[45] Also, in «The Erymanthian Boar», a character is said to have been turned out of Austria by the Nazis, implying that the events of The Labours of Hercules took place after 1937. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the Labours takes place at one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four^[46] (1927) which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of Peril at End House (1932). He has certainly retired at the time of Three Act Tragedy (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and repeatedly takes cases thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. He continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man’s Folly, which take place in the mid-1950s. It is, therefore, better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot’s retirement but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective, or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required.

One consistent element about Poirot’s retirement is that his fame declines during it so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters (especially younger characters) recognise neither him nor his name:

«I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.»

The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.

«What a lovely name,» she said kindly. «Greek, isn’t it?»^[47]

Post–World War II[edit]

He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past.

Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with Three Act Tragedy (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral, and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In Cat Among the Pigeons, Poirot’s entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of Christie’s distaste for him, is impossible to assess. Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which could easily have been Poirot novels, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of his presence in such works.

Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot’s retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins.^{[49][page needed]} In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic riddles as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand.^{[50][page needed]}

Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator)^[a] becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up-and-coming generation’s young people. In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings-on in a student hostel, while in Third Girl (1966) he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself.

You’re too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don’t want to be rude but – there it is. You’re too old. I’m really very sorry.

— Norma Restarick to Poirot in Third Girl, Chapter 1^{[49][page needed]}

Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically, and by the time Arthur Hastings meets Poirot again in Curtain, he looks very different from his previous appearances, having become thin with age and with obviously dyed hair.

Death[edit]

On the ITV television series, Poirot died in October 1949^[53] from complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. This took place at Styles Court, the scene of his first English case in 1916. In Christie’s novels, he lived into the early 1970s, perhaps even until 1975 when Curtain was published. In both the novel and the television adaptation, he had moved his amyl nitrite pills out of his own reach, possibly because of guilt. He thereby became the murderer in Curtain, although it was for the benefit of others. Poirot himself noted that he wanted to kill his victim shortly before his own death so that he could avoid succumbing to the arrogance of the murderer, concerned that he might come to view himself as entitled to kill those whom he deemed necessary to eliminate.

The «murderer» that he was hunting had never actually killed anyone, but he had manipulated others to kill for him, subtly and psychologically manipulating the moments where others desire to commit murder so that they carry out the crime when they might otherwise dismiss their thoughts as nothing more than a momentary passion. Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself, as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted, as he did not legally do anything wrong. It is revealed at the end of Curtain that he fakes his need for a wheelchair to fool people into believing that he is suffering from arthritis, to give the impression that he is more infirm than he is. His last recorded words are «Cher ami!«, spoken to Hastings as the Captain left his room. (The TV adaptation adds that as Poirot is dying alone, he whispers out his final prayer to God in these words: «Forgive me… forgive…») Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friend Hastings and Hastings’ daughter Judith. Hastings reasoned, «Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last.»

Poirot’s actual death and funeral occurred in Curtain, years after his retirement from the active investigation, but it was not the first time that Hastings attended the funeral of his best friend. In The Big Four (1927), Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four.

Recurring characters[edit]

Captain Arthur Hastings[edit]

Hastings, a former British Army officer, meets Poirot during Poirot’s years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England. He becomes Poirot’s lifelong friend and appears in many cases. Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them and for his tendency to unknowingly «stumble» onto the truth.^[54] Hastings marries and has four children – two sons and two daughters. As a loyal, albeit somewhat naïve companion, Hastings is to Poirot what Watson is to Sherlock Holmes.

Hastings is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and displaying unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. However, when forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he initially chooses to betray Poirot to protect his wife. Later, though, he tells Poirot to draw back and escape the trap.

The two are an airtight team until Hastings meets and marries Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, after investigating the Murder on the Links. They later emigrated to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a «very unhappy old man». However, Poirot and Hastings reunite during the novels The Big Four, Peril at End House, The ABC Murders, Lord Edgware Dies, and Dumb Witness, when Hastings arrives in England for business, with Poirot noting in ABC Murders that he enjoys having Hastings over because he feels that he always has his most interesting cases with Hastings. The two collaborate for the final time in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case when the seemingly-crippled Poirot asks Hastings to assist him in his final case. When the killer they are tracking nearly manipulates Hastings into committing murder, Poirot describes this in his final farewell letter to Hastings as the catalyst that prompted him to eliminate the man himself, as Poirot knew that his friend was not a murderer and refused to let a man capable of manipulating Hastings in such a manner go on.

Mrs Ariadne Oliver[edit]

Detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie’s humorous self-caricature. Like Christie, she is not overly fond of the detective whom she is most famous for creating–in Ariadne’s case, Finnish sleuth Sven Hjerson. We never learn anything about her husband, but we do know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of Hallowe’en Party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle, and in every appearance by her much is made of her clothes and hats. Her maid Maria prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer but does nothing to prevent her from becoming too much of a burden on others.

She has authored more than 56 novels and greatly dislikes people modifying her characters. She is the only one in Poirot’s universe to have noted that «It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B.» She first met Poirot in the story Cards on the Table and has bothered him ever since.

Miss Felicity Lemon[edit]

Poirot’s secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only mistakes she makes within the series are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electricity bill, although she was worried about strange events surrounding her sister who worked at a student hostel at the time. Poirot described her as being «Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration.» She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also worked for the government statistician-turned-philanthropist Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot’s numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown.^{[citation needed]} In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie’s Poirot she was portrayed by Pauline Moran. On a number of occasions, she joins Poirot in his inquiries or seeks out answers alone at his request.

Chief Inspector James Harold Japp[edit]

Japp is a Scotland Yard Inspector and appears in many of the stories trying to solve cases that Poirot is working on. Japp is outgoing, loud, and sometimes inconsiderate by nature, and his relationship with the refined Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot’s world. He first met Poirot in Belgium in 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery. Later that year they joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps Japp and lets him take credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with other interesting cases.^[55] In Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson. In the film, Thirteen at Dinner (1985), adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, the role of Japp was taken by the actor David Suchet, who would later star as Poirot in the ITV adaptations.

Major novels[edit]

The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).

Hercule Poirot became famous in 1926 with the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, «Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?» Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including Murder on the Orient Express (1934); The ABC Murders (1935); Cards on the Table (1936); and Death on the Nile (1937), a tale of multiple murders upon a Nile steamer. Death on the Nile was judged by the famed detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time.^[56]

The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (a.k.a. Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analysing various accounts of the tragedy, has been called «the best Christie of all»^[57] by critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard.

In 2014, the Poirot canon was added to by Sophie Hannah, the first author to be commissioned by the Christie estate to write an original story. The novel was called The Monogram Murders, and was set in the late 1920s, placing it chronologically between The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House. A second Hannah-penned Poirot came out in 2016, called Closed Casket, and a third, The Mystery of Three Quarters, in 2018.^[58]

Portrayals[edit]

Stage[edit]

The first actor to portray Poirot was Charles Laughton. He appeared on the West End in 1928 in the play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
In 1932, the play was performed as The Fatal Alibi on Broadway. Another Poirot play, Black Coffee opened in London at the Embassy Theatre on 8 December 1930 and starred Francis L. Sullivan as Poirot. Another production of Black Coffee ran in Dublin, Ireland from 23 to 28 June 1931, starring Robert Powell. American playwright Ken Ludwig adapted Murder on the Orient Express into a play, which premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey on 14 March 2017. It starred Allan Corduner in the role of Hercule Poirot.

Film[edit]

Austin Trevor[edit]

Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on screen in the 1931 British film Alibi. The film was based on the stage play. Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent.^[59] Notably, Trevor’s Poirot did not have a moustache. Leslie S. Hiscott directed the first two films, and Henry Edwards took over for the third.

Tony Randall[edit]

Tony Randall portrayed Poirot in The Alphabet Murders, a 1965 film also known as The ABC Murders. This was more a satire of Poirot than a straightforward adaptation and was greatly changed from the original. Much of the story, set in modern times, was played for comedy, with Poirot investigating the murders while evading the attempts by Hastings (Robert Morley) and the police to get him out of England and back to Belgium.

Albert Finney[edit]

Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express. As of now, Finney is the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win.

Peter Ustinov[edit]

Peter Ustinov played Poirot six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment with Death (1988).

Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks observed Ustinov during a rehearsal and said, «That’s not Poirot! He isn’t at all like that!» Ustinov overheard and remarked «He is now!«^[60]

He appeared again as Poirot in three television films: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man’s Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). Earlier adaptations were set during the time in which the novels were written, but these television films were set in the contemporary era. The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Bros. It also starred Faye Dunaway, with David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before Suchet began to play Poirot. David Suchet considers his performance as Japp to be «possibly the worst performance of [his] career».^[61]

Kenneth Branagh[edit]

Kenneth Branagh played Poirot in film adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express in 2017 and Death on the Nile in 2022, both of which he also directed. He is currently set to return for a third film.

Other[edit]

• Anatoly Ravikovich, Zagadka Endkhauza (End House Mystery) (1989; based on «Peril at End House»)

Television[edit]

David Suchet[edit]

David Suchet starred as Poirot in the ITV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot from 1989 until June 2013, when he announced that he was bidding farewell to the role. «No one could’ve guessed then that the series would span a quarter-century or that the classically trained Suchet would complete the entire catalogue of whodunits featuring the eccentric Belgian investigator, including 33 novels and dozens of short stories.»^[62] His final appearance in the show was in an adaptation of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, aired on 13 November 2013.

The writers of the «Binge!» article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44 (26 December 2014 – 3 January 2015) picked Suchet as «Best Poirot» in the «Hercule Poirot & Miss Marple» timeline.^[63]

The episodes were shot in various locations in the UK and abroad (for example Triangle at Rhodes and Problem at Sea^[64]), whilst other scenes were shot at Twickenham Studios.^[65]

Other[edit]

• Heini Göbel, (1955; an adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express for the West German television series Die Galerie der großen Detektive)
• José Ferrer, Hercule Poirot (1961; Unaired TV Pilot, MGM; adaptation of «The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim»)
• Martin Gabel, General Electric Theater (4/1/1962; adaptation of «The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim»)
• Horst Bollmann, Black Coffee 1973
• Ian Holm, Murder by the Book, 1986
• Arnolds Liniņš, Slepkavība Stailzā (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), 1990
• Hugh Laurie, Spice World, 1997
• Alfred Molina, Murder on the Orient Express, 2001
• Konstantin Raikin, Neudacha Puaro (Poirot’s Failure) (2002; based on «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»)
• Anthony O’Donnell, Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures, 2004
• Shirō Itō (Takashi Akafuji), Meitantei Akafuji Takashi (The Detective Takashi Akafuji), 2005
• Mansai Nomura (Takeru Suguro), Orient Kyūkō Satsujin Jiken (Murder on the Orient Express), 2015; Kuroido Goroshi (The Murder of Kuroido), 2018 (based on «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»); Shi to no Yakusoku, 2021 (based on Appointment with Death)
• John Malkovich was Poirot in the 2018 BBC adaptation of The ABC Murders.^[66]

Anime[edit]

In 2004, NHK (Japanese public TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, as well as a manga series under the same title released in 2005. The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from 4 July 2004 through 15 May 2005, and in repeated reruns on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Kōtarō Satomi and Miss Marple was voiced by Kaoru Yachigusa.

Radio[edit]

From 1985 to 2007, BBC Radio 4 produced a series of twenty-seven adaptations of Poirot novels and short stories, adapted by Michael Bakewell and directed by Enyd Williams.^[67] Twenty five starred John Moffatt as Poirot; Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis played Poirot on BBC Radio 4 in the first two adaptations, The Mystery of the Blue Train and in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas respectively.

In 1939, Orson Welles and the Mercury Players dramatised Roger Ackroyd on CBS’s Campbell Playhouse.^[68][69]

On 6 October 1942, the Mutual radio series Murder Clinic broadcast «The Tragedy at Marsden Manor» starring Maurice Tarplin as Poirot.^[70]

A 1945 radio series of at least 13 original half-hour episodes (none of which apparently adapt any Christie stories) transferred Poirot from London to New York and starred character actor Harold Huber,^[71] perhaps better known for his appearances as a police officer in various Charlie Chan films. On 22 February 1945, «speaking from London, Agatha Christie introduced the initial broadcast of the Poirot series via shortwave».^[68]

An adaptation of Murder in the Mews was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in March 1955 starring Richard Williams as Poirot; this program was thought lost, but was discovered in the BBC archives in 2015.^[72]

Other audio[edit]

In 2017, Audible released an original audio adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express starring Tom Conti as Poirot.^[73] The cast included Jane Asher as Mrs. Hubbard, Jay Benedict as Monsieur Bouc, Ruta Gedmintas as Countess Andrenyi, Sophie Okonedo as Mary Debenham, Eddie Marsan as Ratchett, Walles Hamonde as Hector MacQueen, Paterson Joseph as Colonel Arbuthnot, Rula Lenska as Princess Dragimiroff and Art Malik as the Narrator. According to the Publisher’s Summary on Audible.com, «sound effects [were] recorded on the Orient Express itself.»

In 2021, L.A. Theatre Works produced an adaptation of The Murder on the Links, dramatised by Kate McAll. Alfred Molina starred as Poirot, with Simon Helberg as Hastings.^[74]

Video games[edit]

The video game Agatha Christie — Hercule Poirot: The First Cases has Poirot voice acted by Will De Renzy-Martin.^{[citation needed]}

Parodies and references[edit]

Parodies of Hercule Poirot have appeared in a number of movies, including Revenge of the Pink Panther, where Poirot makes a cameo appearance in a mental asylum, portrayed by Andrew Sachs and claiming to be «the greatest detective in all of France, the greatest in all the world»; Neil Simon’s Murder by Death, where «Milo Perrier» is played by American actor James Coco; the 1977 film The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977); the film Spice World, where Hugh Laurie plays Poirot; and in Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Poirot appears as a young boy on the train transporting Holmes and Watson. Holmes helps the boy in opening a puzzle-box, with Watson giving the boy advice about using his «little grey cells».

In the book series Geronimo Stilton, the character Hercule Poirat is inspired by Hercule Poirot.

The Belgian brewery Brasserie Ellezelloise makes a stout called Hercule with a moustachioed caricature of Hercule Poirot on the label.^[75]

In season 2, episode 4 of TVFPlay’s Indian web series Permanent Roommates, one of the characters refers to Hercule Poirot as her inspiration while she attempts to solve the mystery of the cheating spouse. Throughout the episode, she is mocked as Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie by the suspects.^[76] TVFPlay also telecasted a spoof of Indian TV suspense drama CID as «Qissa Missing Dimaag Ka: C.I.D Qtiyapa«. In the first episode, when Ujjwal is shown to browse for the best detectives of the world, David Suchet appears as Poirot in his search.^[77]

See also[edit]

• Poirot Investigates
• Tropes in Agatha Christie’s novels

Footnotes[edit]

References[edit]

Literature[edit]

Works[edit]

• Christie, Agatha (1939). The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-61298-214-4.
• Christie, Agatha (1947). Prologue. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1947a). The Apples of the Hesperides. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1947b). The Stymphalean Birds. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1947c). The Erymanthian Boar. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1948). Taken at the Flood.
• Christie, Agatha (1952). Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.
• Christie, Agatha (1961). The Pale Horse by A.Christie. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1975). Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-712112-0.
• Christie, Agatha (1980). Evil Under the Sun: Death Comes as the End; The Sittaford Mystery. Lansdowne Press. ISBN 978-0-7018-1458-8.
• Christie, Agatha (1991). The A.B.C. murders: [a Hercule Poirot mystery]. Berkley Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-425-13024-7.
• Christie, Agatha (28 September 2004a). The Clocks. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174050-3.
• Christie, Agatha (6 January 2004b). The Big Four. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-173909-5.
• Christie, Agatha (25 January 2005). After the Funeral: Hercule Poirot Investigates. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-173991-0.
• Christie, Agatha (3 October 2006a). The Labours of Hercules: Hercule Poirot Investigates. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174638-3.
• Christie, Agatha (3 October 2006b). Three Act Tragedy. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-175403-6.
• Christie, Agatha (17 March 2009). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-176340-3.
• Christie, Agatha (17 March 2009b). Peril at End House. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174927-8.
• Christie, Agatha (10 February 2010). Death in the Clouds. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174311-5.
• Christie, Agatha (1 February 2011a). Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-207357-0.
• Christie, Agatha (29 March 2011). Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-207350-1.
• Christie, Agatha (1 September 2011b). The Dream: A Hercule Poirot Short Story. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-00-745198-2.
• Christie, Agatha (14 June 2011c). Third Girl: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-207376-1.
• Christie, Agatha (12 April 2012). The Kidnapped Prime Minister: A Hercule Poirot Short Story. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-00-748658-8.
• Christie, Agatha (2013). Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories: A Hercule Poirot Collection with Foreword by Charles Todd. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-225165-7.
• Christie, Agatha (9 July 2013a). The Lost Mine: A Hercule Poirot Story. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-229818-8.
• Christie, Agatha (23 July 2013b). Double Sin: A Hercule Poirot Story. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-229845-4.

Reviews[edit]

• Barnard, Robert (1980), A Talent to Deceive, London: Fontana/Collins
• Goddard, John (2018), Agatha Christie’s Golden Age: An Analysis of Poirot’s Golden Age Puzzles, Stylish Eye Press, ISBN 978-1-999-61200-9
• Hart, Anne (2004), Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot, London: Harper and Collins
• Kretzschmar, Judith; Stoppe, Sebastian; Vollberg, Susanne, eds. (2016), Hercule Poirot trifft Miss Marple. Agatha Christie intermedial, Darmstadt: Büchner, ISBN 978-3-941310-48-3.
• Osborne, Charles (1982), The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, London: Collins

External links[edit]

• Official Agatha Christie website
• A collection of public domain Poirot works as eBooks at Standard Ebooks
• Hercule Poirot on IMDb
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles at Project Gutenberg
• Listen to Orson Welles in «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»
• Listen to the 1945 Hercule Poirot radio program
• Wiktionary definition of Edgar Allan Poe’s «ratiocination»

Hercule Poirot
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Poirot
First appearance	The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Last appearance	Curtain (1975)
Created by	Agatha Christie
Portrayed by	Charles Laughton Francis L. Sullivan Austin Trevor Orson Welles Harold Huber Richard Williams John Malkovich José Ferrer Martin Gabel Tony Randall Albert Finney Dudley Jones Peter Ustinov Ian Holm David Suchet John Moffatt Maurice Denham Peter Sallis Konstantin Raikin Alfred Molina Robert Powell Jason Durr Kenneth Branagh Anthony O’Donnell Shirō Itō (Takashi Akafuji) Mansai Nomura (Takeru Suguro) Tom Conti
Voiced by	Kōtarō Satomi
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Private investigator Police officer (former occupation)
Family	Jules-Louis Poirot (father) Godelieve Poirot (mother)
Religion	Catholic
Nationality	Belgian

Hercule Poirot (, ^[1]) is a fictional Belgian detective created by British writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is one of Christie’s most famous and long-running characters, appearing in 33 novels, two plays (Black Coffee and Alibi), and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.

Poirot has been portrayed on radio, in film and on television by various actors, including Austin Trevor, John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, Orson Welles, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh, and John Malkovich.

Overview[edit]

Influences[edit]

Poirot’s name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans’ Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London.^[2] Evans’ Jules Poiret «was small and rather heavyset, hardly more than five feet, but moved with his head held high. The most remarkable features of his head were the stiff military moustache. His apparel was neat to perfection, a little quaint and frankly dandified.» He was accompanied by Captain Harry Haven, who had returned to London from a Colombian business venture ended by a civil war. ^[3]

A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In An Autobiography, Christie states, «I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp».^[4] For his part, Conan Doyle acknowledged basing his detective stories on the model of Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and his anonymous narrator, and basing his character Sherlock Holmes on Joseph Bell, who in his use of «ratiocination» prefigured Poirot’s reliance on his «little grey cells».

Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason’s fictional detective Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté, who first appeared in the 1910 novel At the Villa Rose and predates the first Poirot novel by 10 years.

Christie’s Poirot was clearly the result of her early development of the detective in her first book, written in 1916 and published in 1920. Belgium’s occupation by Germany during World War I provided a plausible explanation of why such a skilled detective would be available to solve mysteries at an English country house.^[5] At the time of Christie’s writing, it was considered patriotic to express sympathy towards the Belgians,^[6] since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain’s casus belli for entering World War I, and British wartime propaganda emphasised the «Rape of Belgium».

Popularity[edit]

Poirot first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published in 1920) and exited in Curtain (published in 1975). Following the latter, Poirot was the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of The New York Times.^[7][8]

By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot «insufferable», and by 1960 she felt that he was a «detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep». Despite this, Poirot remained an exceedingly popular character with the general public. Christie later stated that she refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked.^[9]

Appearance and proclivities[edit]

Captain Arthur Hastings’s first description of Poirot:

He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.
The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police.^[5]

Agatha Christie’s initial description of Poirot in The Murder on the Orient Express:

By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young French lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man [Hercule Poirot] muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache. ^[10]

In the later books, his limp is not mentioned, suggesting it may have been a temporary wartime injury. (In Curtain, Poirot admits he was wounded when he first came to England.) Poirot has green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining «like a cat’s» when he is struck by a clever idea,^[11] and dark hair, which he dyes later in life. In Curtain, he admits to Hastings that he wears a wig and a false moustache.^[12] However, in many of his screen incarnations, he is bald or balding.

Frequent mention is made of his patent leather shoes, damage to which is frequently a source of misery for him, but comical for the reader.^[13] Poirot’s appearance, regarded as fastidious during his early career, later falls hopelessly out of fashion.^[14]

Among Poirot’s most significant personal attributes is the sensitivity of his stomach:

The plane dropped slightly. «Mon estomac,» thought Hercule Poirot, and closed his eyes determinedly.^[15]

He suffers from sea sickness,^[16] and, in Death in the Clouds, he states that his air sickness prevents him from being more alert at the time of the murder. Later in his life, we are told:

Always a man who had taken his stomach seriously, he was reaping his reward in old age. Eating was not only a physical pleasure, it was also an intellectual research.^[15]

Poirot is extremely punctual and carries a pocket watch almost to the end of his career.^[17] He is also particular about his personal finances, preferring to keep a bank balance of 444 pounds, 4 shillings, and 4 pence.^[18] Actor David Suchet, who portrayed Poirot on television, said «there’s no question he’s obsessive-compulsive».^[19] Film portrayer Kenneth Branagh said that he «enjoyed finding the sort of obsessive-compulsive» in Poirot.^[20]

As mentioned in Curtain and The Clocks, he is fond of classical music, particularly Mozart and Bach.

Methods[edit]

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based and logical detective; reflected in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of «the little grey cells» and «order and method». Hastings is irritated by the fact that Poirot sometimes conceals important details of his plans, as in The Big Four.^[21] In this novel, Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator to mislead.

In Murder on the Links, still largely dependent on clues himself, Poirot mocks a rival «bloodhound» detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues established in detective fiction (e.g., Sherlock Holmes depending on footprints, fingerprints, and cigar ash). From this point on, Poirot establishes his psychological bona fides. Rather than painstakingly examining crime scenes, he enquires into the nature of the victim or the psychology of the murderer. He predicates his actions in the later novels on his underlying assumption that particular crimes are committed by particular types of people.

Poirot focuses on getting people to talk. In the early novels, he casts himself in the role of «Papa Poirot», a benign confessor, especially to young women. In later works, Christie made a point of having Poirot supply false or misleading information about himself or his background to assist him in obtaining information.^[22] In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot speaks of a non-existent mentally disabled nephew^[23] to uncover information about homes for the mentally unfit. In Dumb Witness, Poirot invents an elderly invalid mother as a pretence to investigate local nurses. In The Big Four, Poirot pretends to have (and poses as) an identical twin brother named Achille: however, this brother was mentioned again in The Labours of Hercules.^[21]

«If I remember rightly – though my memory isn’t what it was – you also had a brother called Achille, did you not?” Poirot’s mind raced back over the details of Achille Poirot’s career. Had all that really happened? «Only for a short space of time,» he replied.^[24]

Poirot is also willing to appear more foreign or vain in an effort to make people underestimate him. He admits as much:

It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say – a foreigner – he can’t even speak English properly. … Also I boast! An Englishman he says often, «A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much.» … And so, you see, I put people off their guard.^[25]

He also has a tendency to refer to himself in the third person.^[26][27]

In later novels, Christie often uses the word mountebank when characters describe Poirot, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud.

Poirot’s investigating techniques assist him solving cases; «For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…»^[28] At the end, Poirot usually reveals his description of the sequence of events and his deductions to a room of suspects, often leading to the culprit’s apprehension.

Life[edit]

Origins[edit]

Christie was purposely vague about Poirot’s origins, as he is thought to be an elderly man even in the early novels. In An Autobiography, she admitted that she already imagined him to be an old man in 1920. At the time, however, she did not know that she would write works featuring him for decades to come.

A brief passage in The Big Four provides original information about Poirot’s birth or at least childhood in or near the town of Spa, Belgium: «But we did not go into Spa itself. We left the main road and wound into the leafy fastnesses of the hills, till we reached a little hamlet and an isolated white villa high on the hillside.»^[29] Christie strongly implies that this «quiet retreat in the Ardennes»^[30] near Spa is the location of the Poirot family home.

An alternative tradition holds that Poirot was born in the village of Ellezelles (province of Hainaut, Belgium).^[31] A few memorials dedicated to Hercule Poirot can be seen in the centre of this village. There appears to be no reference to this in Christie’s writings, but the town of Ellezelles cherishes a copy of Poirot’s birth certificate in a local memorial ‘attesting’ Poirot’s birth, naming his father and mother as Jules-Louis Poirot and Godelieve Poirot.

Christie wrote that Poirot is a Catholic by birth,^[32] but not much is described about his later religious convictions, except sporadic references to his «going to church».^[33] Christie provides little information regarding Poirot’s childhood, only mentioning in Three Act Tragedy that he comes from a large family with little wealth, and has at least one younger sister. Apart from French and English, Poirot is also fluent in German.^[34]

Policeman[edit]

Gustave … was not a policeman. I have dealt with policemen all my life and I know. He could pass as a detective to an outsider but not to a man who was a policeman himself.

— Hercule Poirot Christie 1947c

Hercule Poirot was active in the Brussels police force by 1893.^[35] Very little mention is made about this part of his life, but in «The Nemean Lion» (1939) Poirot refers to a Belgian case of his in which «a wealthy soap manufacturer … poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary». As Poirot was often misleading about his past to gain information, the truthfulness of that statement is unknown; it does, however, scare off a would-be wife-killer.

In the short story «The Chocolate Box» (1923), Poirot reveals to Captain Arthur Hastings an account of what he considers to be his only failure. Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime «innumerable» times:

I have been called in too late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been struck down with illness just as I was on the point of success.

Nevertheless, he regards the 1893 case in «The Chocolate Box»,^[36] as his only failure through his fault only. Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth. During his police career, Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof into the public below.^[37] In Lord Edgware Dies, Poirot reveals that he learned to read writing upside down during his police career. Around that time he met Xavier Bouc, director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.

Inspector Japp offers some insight into Poirot’s career with the Belgian police when introducing him to a colleague:

You’ve heard me speak of Mr Poirot? It was in 1904 he and I worked together – the Abercrombie forgery case – you remember he was run down in Brussels. Ah, those were the days Moosier. Then, do you remember «Baron» Altara? There was a pretty rogue for you! He eluded the clutches of half the police in Europe. But we nailed him in Antwerp – thanks to Mr. Poirot here.^[38]

In The Double Clue, Poirot mentions that he was Chief of Police of Brussels, until «the Great War» (World War I) forced him to leave for England.

Private detective[edit]

I had called in at my friend Poirot’s rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot. ^[39]

During World War I, Poirot left Belgium for England as a refugee, although he returned a few times. On 16 July 1916 he again met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. It is clear that Hastings and Poirot are already friends when they meet in Chapter 2 of the novel, as Hastings tells Cynthia that he has not seen him for «some years» (Agatha Christie’s Poirot has Hastings reveal that they met on a shooting case where Hastings was a suspect). Particulars such as the date of 1916 for the case and that Hastings had met Poirot in Belgium, are given in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, Chapter 1. After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service and undertook cases for the British government, including foiling the attempted abduction of the Prime Minister.^[40] Readers were told that the British authorities had learned of Poirot’s keen investigative ability from certain members of Belgium’s royal family.

After the war, Poirot became a private detective and began undertaking civilian cases. He moved into what became both his home and work address, Flat 203 at 56B Whitehaven Mansions. Hastings first visits the flat when he returns to England in June 1935 from Argentina in The A.B.C. Murders, Chapter 1. The TV programmes place this in Florin Court, Charterhouse Square, in the wrong part of London. According to Hastings, it was chosen by Poirot «entirely on account of its strict geometrical appearance and proportion» and described as the «newest type of service flat». (The Florin Court building was actually built in 1936, decades after Poirot fictionally moved in.) His first case in this period was «The Affair at the Victory Ball», which allowed Poirot to enter high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Between the world wars, Poirot travelled all over Europe and the Middle East investigating crimes and solving murders. Most of his cases occurred during this time and he was at the height of his powers at this point in his life. In The Murder on the Links, the Belgian pits his grey cells against a French murderer. In the Middle East, he solved the cases Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia with ease and even survived An Appointment with Death. As he passed through Eastern Europe on his return trip, he solved The Murder on the Orient Express. However, he did not travel to Africa or Asia, probably to avoid seasickness.

It is this villainous sea that troubles me! The mal de mer – it is horrible suffering!^[41]

It was during this time he met the Countess Vera Rossakoff, a glamorous jewel thief. The history of the countess is, like Poirot’s, steeped in mystery. She claims to have been a member of the Russian aristocracy before the Russian Revolution and suffered greatly as a result, but how much of that story is true is an open question. Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff offered wildly varying accounts of her early life. Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice.^[42]

It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the countess held for him.^[43]

Although letting the countess escape was morally questionable, it was not uncommon. In The Nemean Lion, Poirot sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, allowing her to evade prosecution by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who, Poirot discovered, had plans to commit murder. Poirot even sent Miss Carnaby two hundred pounds as a final payoff prior to the conclusion of her dog kidnapping campaign. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Poirot allowed the murderer to escape justice through suicide and then withheld the truth to spare the feelings of the murderer’s relatives. In The Augean Stables, he helped the government to cover up vast corruption. In Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot allowed the murderers to go free after discovering that twelve different people participated in the murder, each one stabbing the victim in a darkened carriage after drugging him into unconsciousness so that there was no way for anyone to definitively determine which of them actually delivered the killing blow. The victim had committed a disgusting crime which led to the deaths of at least five people, and there was no question of his guilt, but he had been acquitted in America in a miscarriage of justice. Considering it poetic justice that twelve jurors had acquitted him and twelve people had stabbed him, Poirot produced an alternative sequence of events to explain the death involving an unknown additional passenger on the train, with the medical examiner agreeing to doctor his own report to support this theory.

After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called Labours of Hercules (see next section) he very rarely went abroad during his later career. He moved into Styles Court towards the end of his life.

While Poirot was usually paid handsomely by clients, he was also known to take on cases that piqued his curiosity, although they did not pay well.

Poirot shows a love of steam trains, which Christie contrasts with Hastings’ love of autos: this is shown in The Plymouth Express, The Mystery of the Blue Train, Murder on the Orient Express, and The ABC Murders (in the TV series, steam trains are seen in nearly all of the episodes).

Retirement[edit]

That’s the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna’s farewell performance won’t be in it with yours, Poirot.^[44]

Confusion surrounds Poirot’s retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot’s private detective agency take place before his retirement to attempt to grow larger marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It has been said that the twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in «The Capture of Cerberus» of the twenty-year gap between Poirot’s previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the Labours precede the events in Roger Ackroyd, then the Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years later than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself.^[45] Also, in «The Erymanthian Boar», a character is said to have been turned out of Austria by the Nazis, implying that the events of The Labours of Hercules took place after 1937. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the Labours takes place at one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four^[46] (1927) which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of Peril at End House (1932). He has certainly retired at the time of Three Act Tragedy (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and repeatedly takes cases thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. He continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man’s Folly, which take place in the mid-1950s. It is, therefore, better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot’s retirement but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective, or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required.

One consistent element about Poirot’s retirement is that his fame declines during it so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters (especially younger characters) recognise neither him nor his name:

«I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.»

The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.

«What a lovely name,» she said kindly. «Greek, isn’t it?»^[47]

Post–World War II[edit]

He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past.

Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with Three Act Tragedy (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral, and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In Cat Among the Pigeons, Poirot’s entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of Christie’s distaste for him, is impossible to assess. Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which could easily have been Poirot novels, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of his presence in such works.

Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot’s retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins.^{[49][page needed]} In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic riddles as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand.^{[50][page needed]}

Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator)^[a] becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up-and-coming generation’s young people. In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings-on in a student hostel, while in Third Girl (1966) he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself.

You’re too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don’t want to be rude but – there it is. You’re too old. I’m really very sorry.

— Norma Restarick to Poirot in Third Girl, Chapter 1^{[49][page needed]}

Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically, and by the time Arthur Hastings meets Poirot again in Curtain, he looks very different from his previous appearances, having become thin with age and with obviously dyed hair.

Death[edit]

On the ITV television series, Poirot died in October 1949^[53] from complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. This took place at Styles Court, the scene of his first English case in 1916. In Christie’s novels, he lived into the early 1970s, perhaps even until 1975 when Curtain was published. In both the novel and the television adaptation, he had moved his amyl nitrite pills out of his own reach, possibly because of guilt. He thereby became the murderer in Curtain, although it was for the benefit of others. Poirot himself noted that he wanted to kill his victim shortly before his own death so that he could avoid succumbing to the arrogance of the murderer, concerned that he might come to view himself as entitled to kill those whom he deemed necessary to eliminate.

The «murderer» that he was hunting had never actually killed anyone, but he had manipulated others to kill for him, subtly and psychologically manipulating the moments where others desire to commit murder so that they carry out the crime when they might otherwise dismiss their thoughts as nothing more than a momentary passion. Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself, as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted, as he did not legally do anything wrong. It is revealed at the end of Curtain that he fakes his need for a wheelchair to fool people into believing that he is suffering from arthritis, to give the impression that he is more infirm than he is. His last recorded words are «Cher ami!«, spoken to Hastings as the Captain left his room. (The TV adaptation adds that as Poirot is dying alone, he whispers out his final prayer to God in these words: «Forgive me… forgive…») Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friend Hastings and Hastings’ daughter Judith. Hastings reasoned, «Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last.»

Poirot’s actual death and funeral occurred in Curtain, years after his retirement from the active investigation, but it was not the first time that Hastings attended the funeral of his best friend. In The Big Four (1927), Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four.

Recurring characters[edit]

Captain Arthur Hastings[edit]

Hastings, a former British Army officer, meets Poirot during Poirot’s years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England. He becomes Poirot’s lifelong friend and appears in many cases. Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them and for his tendency to unknowingly «stumble» onto the truth.^[54] Hastings marries and has four children – two sons and two daughters. As a loyal, albeit somewhat naïve companion, Hastings is to Poirot what Watson is to Sherlock Holmes.

Hastings is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and displaying unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. However, when forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he initially chooses to betray Poirot to protect his wife. Later, though, he tells Poirot to draw back and escape the trap.

The two are an airtight team until Hastings meets and marries Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, after investigating the Murder on the Links. They later emigrated to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a «very unhappy old man». However, Poirot and Hastings reunite during the novels The Big Four, Peril at End House, The ABC Murders, Lord Edgware Dies, and Dumb Witness, when Hastings arrives in England for business, with Poirot noting in ABC Murders that he enjoys having Hastings over because he feels that he always has his most interesting cases with Hastings. The two collaborate for the final time in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case when the seemingly-crippled Poirot asks Hastings to assist him in his final case. When the killer they are tracking nearly manipulates Hastings into committing murder, Poirot describes this in his final farewell letter to Hastings as the catalyst that prompted him to eliminate the man himself, as Poirot knew that his friend was not a murderer and refused to let a man capable of manipulating Hastings in such a manner go on.

Mrs Ariadne Oliver[edit]

Detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie’s humorous self-caricature. Like Christie, she is not overly fond of the detective whom she is most famous for creating–in Ariadne’s case, Finnish sleuth Sven Hjerson. We never learn anything about her husband, but we do know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of Hallowe’en Party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle, and in every appearance by her much is made of her clothes and hats. Her maid Maria prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer but does nothing to prevent her from becoming too much of a burden on others.

She has authored more than 56 novels and greatly dislikes people modifying her characters. She is the only one in Poirot’s universe to have noted that «It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B.» She first met Poirot in the story Cards on the Table and has bothered him ever since.

Miss Felicity Lemon[edit]

Poirot’s secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only mistakes she makes within the series are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electricity bill, although she was worried about strange events surrounding her sister who worked at a student hostel at the time. Poirot described her as being «Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration.» She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also worked for the government statistician-turned-philanthropist Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot’s numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown.^{[citation needed]} In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie’s Poirot she was portrayed by Pauline Moran. On a number of occasions, she joins Poirot in his inquiries or seeks out answers alone at his request.

Chief Inspector James Harold Japp[edit]

Japp is a Scotland Yard Inspector and appears in many of the stories trying to solve cases that Poirot is working on. Japp is outgoing, loud, and sometimes inconsiderate by nature, and his relationship with the refined Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot’s world. He first met Poirot in Belgium in 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery. Later that year they joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps Japp and lets him take credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with other interesting cases.^[55] In Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson. In the film, Thirteen at Dinner (1985), adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, the role of Japp was taken by the actor David Suchet, who would later star as Poirot in the ITV adaptations.

Major novels[edit]

The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).

Hercule Poirot became famous in 1926 with the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, «Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?» Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including Murder on the Orient Express (1934); The ABC Murders (1935); Cards on the Table (1936); and Death on the Nile (1937), a tale of multiple murders upon a Nile steamer. Death on the Nile was judged by the famed detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time.^[56]

The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (a.k.a. Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analysing various accounts of the tragedy, has been called «the best Christie of all»^[57] by critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard.

In 2014, the Poirot canon was added to by Sophie Hannah, the first author to be commissioned by the Christie estate to write an original story. The novel was called The Monogram Murders, and was set in the late 1920s, placing it chronologically between The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House. A second Hannah-penned Poirot came out in 2016, called Closed Casket, and a third, The Mystery of Three Quarters, in 2018.^[58]

Portrayals[edit]

Stage[edit]

The first actor to portray Poirot was Charles Laughton. He appeared on the West End in 1928 in the play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
In 1932, the play was performed as The Fatal Alibi on Broadway. Another Poirot play, Black Coffee opened in London at the Embassy Theatre on 8 December 1930 and starred Francis L. Sullivan as Poirot. Another production of Black Coffee ran in Dublin, Ireland from 23 to 28 June 1931, starring Robert Powell. American playwright Ken Ludwig adapted Murder on the Orient Express into a play, which premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey on 14 March 2017. It starred Allan Corduner in the role of Hercule Poirot.

Film[edit]

Austin Trevor[edit]

Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on screen in the 1931 British film Alibi. The film was based on the stage play. Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent.^[59] Notably, Trevor’s Poirot did not have a moustache. Leslie S. Hiscott directed the first two films, and Henry Edwards took over for the third.

Tony Randall[edit]

Tony Randall portrayed Poirot in The Alphabet Murders, a 1965 film also known as The ABC Murders. This was more a satire of Poirot than a straightforward adaptation and was greatly changed from the original. Much of the story, set in modern times, was played for comedy, with Poirot investigating the murders while evading the attempts by Hastings (Robert Morley) and the police to get him out of England and back to Belgium.

Albert Finney[edit]

Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express. As of now, Finney is the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win.

Peter Ustinov[edit]

Peter Ustinov played Poirot six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment with Death (1988).

Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks observed Ustinov during a rehearsal and said, «That’s not Poirot! He isn’t at all like that!» Ustinov overheard and remarked «He is now!«^[60]

He appeared again as Poirot in three television films: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man’s Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). Earlier adaptations were set during the time in which the novels were written, but these television films were set in the contemporary era. The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Bros. It also starred Faye Dunaway, with David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before Suchet began to play Poirot. David Suchet considers his performance as Japp to be «possibly the worst performance of [his] career».^[61]

Kenneth Branagh[edit]

Kenneth Branagh played Poirot in film adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express in 2017 and Death on the Nile in 2022, both of which he also directed. He is currently set to return for a third film.

Other[edit]

• Anatoly Ravikovich, Zagadka Endkhauza (End House Mystery) (1989; based on «Peril at End House»)

Television[edit]

David Suchet[edit]

David Suchet starred as Poirot in the ITV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot from 1989 until June 2013, when he announced that he was bidding farewell to the role. «No one could’ve guessed then that the series would span a quarter-century or that the classically trained Suchet would complete the entire catalogue of whodunits featuring the eccentric Belgian investigator, including 33 novels and dozens of short stories.»^[62] His final appearance in the show was in an adaptation of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, aired on 13 November 2013.

The writers of the «Binge!» article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44 (26 December 2014 – 3 January 2015) picked Suchet as «Best Poirot» in the «Hercule Poirot & Miss Marple» timeline.^[63]

The episodes were shot in various locations in the UK and abroad (for example Triangle at Rhodes and Problem at Sea^[64]), whilst other scenes were shot at Twickenham Studios.^[65]

Other[edit]

• Heini Göbel, (1955; an adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express for the West German television series Die Galerie der großen Detektive)
• José Ferrer, Hercule Poirot (1961; Unaired TV Pilot, MGM; adaptation of «The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim»)
• Martin Gabel, General Electric Theater (4/1/1962; adaptation of «The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim»)
• Horst Bollmann, Black Coffee 1973
• Ian Holm, Murder by the Book, 1986
• Arnolds Liniņš, Slepkavība Stailzā (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), 1990
• Hugh Laurie, Spice World, 1997
• Alfred Molina, Murder on the Orient Express, 2001
• Konstantin Raikin, Neudacha Puaro (Poirot’s Failure) (2002; based on «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»)
• Anthony O’Donnell, Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures, 2004
• Shirō Itō (Takashi Akafuji), Meitantei Akafuji Takashi (The Detective Takashi Akafuji), 2005
• Mansai Nomura (Takeru Suguro), Orient Kyūkō Satsujin Jiken (Murder on the Orient Express), 2015; Kuroido Goroshi (The Murder of Kuroido), 2018 (based on «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»); Shi to no Yakusoku, 2021 (based on Appointment with Death)
• John Malkovich was Poirot in the 2018 BBC adaptation of The ABC Murders.^[66]

Anime[edit]

In 2004, NHK (Japanese public TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, as well as a manga series under the same title released in 2005. The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from 4 July 2004 through 15 May 2005, and in repeated reruns on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Kōtarō Satomi and Miss Marple was voiced by Kaoru Yachigusa.

Radio[edit]

From 1985 to 2007, BBC Radio 4 produced a series of twenty-seven adaptations of Poirot novels and short stories, adapted by Michael Bakewell and directed by Enyd Williams.^[67] Twenty five starred John Moffatt as Poirot; Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis played Poirot on BBC Radio 4 in the first two adaptations, The Mystery of the Blue Train and in Hercule Poirot’s Christmas respectively.

In 1939, Orson Welles and the Mercury Players dramatised Roger Ackroyd on CBS’s Campbell Playhouse.^[68][69]

On 6 October 1942, the Mutual radio series Murder Clinic broadcast «The Tragedy at Marsden Manor» starring Maurice Tarplin as Poirot.^[70]

A 1945 radio series of at least 13 original half-hour episodes (none of which apparently adapt any Christie stories) transferred Poirot from London to New York and starred character actor Harold Huber,^[71] perhaps better known for his appearances as a police officer in various Charlie Chan films. On 22 February 1945, «speaking from London, Agatha Christie introduced the initial broadcast of the Poirot series via shortwave».^[68]

An adaptation of Murder in the Mews was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in March 1955 starring Richard Williams as Poirot; this program was thought lost, but was discovered in the BBC archives in 2015.^[72]

Other audio[edit]

In 2017, Audible released an original audio adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express starring Tom Conti as Poirot.^[73] The cast included Jane Asher as Mrs. Hubbard, Jay Benedict as Monsieur Bouc, Ruta Gedmintas as Countess Andrenyi, Sophie Okonedo as Mary Debenham, Eddie Marsan as Ratchett, Walles Hamonde as Hector MacQueen, Paterson Joseph as Colonel Arbuthnot, Rula Lenska as Princess Dragimiroff and Art Malik as the Narrator. According to the Publisher’s Summary on Audible.com, «sound effects [were] recorded on the Orient Express itself.»

In 2021, L.A. Theatre Works produced an adaptation of The Murder on the Links, dramatised by Kate McAll. Alfred Molina starred as Poirot, with Simon Helberg as Hastings.^[74]

Video games[edit]

The video game Agatha Christie — Hercule Poirot: The First Cases has Poirot voice acted by Will De Renzy-Martin.^{[citation needed]}

Parodies and references[edit]

Parodies of Hercule Poirot have appeared in a number of movies, including Revenge of the Pink Panther, where Poirot makes a cameo appearance in a mental asylum, portrayed by Andrew Sachs and claiming to be «the greatest detective in all of France, the greatest in all the world»; Neil Simon’s Murder by Death, where «Milo Perrier» is played by American actor James Coco; the 1977 film The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977); the film Spice World, where Hugh Laurie plays Poirot; and in Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Poirot appears as a young boy on the train transporting Holmes and Watson. Holmes helps the boy in opening a puzzle-box, with Watson giving the boy advice about using his «little grey cells».

In the book series Geronimo Stilton, the character Hercule Poirat is inspired by Hercule Poirot.

The Belgian brewery Brasserie Ellezelloise makes a stout called Hercule with a moustachioed caricature of Hercule Poirot on the label.^[75]

In season 2, episode 4 of TVFPlay’s Indian web series Permanent Roommates, one of the characters refers to Hercule Poirot as her inspiration while she attempts to solve the mystery of the cheating spouse. Throughout the episode, she is mocked as Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie by the suspects.^[76] TVFPlay also telecasted a spoof of Indian TV suspense drama CID as «Qissa Missing Dimaag Ka: C.I.D Qtiyapa«. In the first episode, when Ujjwal is shown to browse for the best detectives of the world, David Suchet appears as Poirot in his search.^[77]

See also[edit]

• Poirot Investigates
• Tropes in Agatha Christie’s novels

Footnotes[edit]

References[edit]

Literature[edit]

Works[edit]

• Christie, Agatha (1939). The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-61298-214-4.
• Christie, Agatha (1947). Prologue. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1947a). The Apples of the Hesperides. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1947b). The Stymphalean Birds. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1947c). The Erymanthian Boar. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1948). Taken at the Flood.
• Christie, Agatha (1952). Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.
• Christie, Agatha (1961). The Pale Horse by A.Christie. Collins.
• Christie, Agatha (1975). Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-712112-0.
• Christie, Agatha (1980). Evil Under the Sun: Death Comes as the End; The Sittaford Mystery. Lansdowne Press. ISBN 978-0-7018-1458-8.
• Christie, Agatha (1991). The A.B.C. murders: [a Hercule Poirot mystery]. Berkley Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-425-13024-7.
• Christie, Agatha (28 September 2004a). The Clocks. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174050-3.
• Christie, Agatha (6 January 2004b). The Big Four. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-173909-5.
• Christie, Agatha (25 January 2005). After the Funeral: Hercule Poirot Investigates. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-173991-0.
• Christie, Agatha (3 October 2006a). The Labours of Hercules: Hercule Poirot Investigates. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174638-3.
• Christie, Agatha (3 October 2006b). Three Act Tragedy. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-175403-6.
• Christie, Agatha (17 March 2009). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-176340-3.
• Christie, Agatha (17 March 2009b). Peril at End House. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174927-8.
• Christie, Agatha (10 February 2010). Death in the Clouds. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-174311-5.
• Christie, Agatha (1 February 2011a). Five Little Pigs: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-207357-0.
• Christie, Agatha (29 March 2011). Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-207350-1.
• Christie, Agatha (1 September 2011b). The Dream: A Hercule Poirot Short Story. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-00-745198-2.
• Christie, Agatha (14 June 2011c). Third Girl: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-207376-1.
• Christie, Agatha (12 April 2012). The Kidnapped Prime Minister: A Hercule Poirot Short Story. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-00-748658-8.
• Christie, Agatha (2013). Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories: A Hercule Poirot Collection with Foreword by Charles Todd. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-225165-7.
• Christie, Agatha (9 July 2013a). The Lost Mine: A Hercule Poirot Story. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-229818-8.
• Christie, Agatha (23 July 2013b). Double Sin: A Hercule Poirot Story. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-229845-4.

Reviews[edit]

• Barnard, Robert (1980), A Talent to Deceive, London: Fontana/Collins
• Goddard, John (2018), Agatha Christie’s Golden Age: An Analysis of Poirot’s Golden Age Puzzles, Stylish Eye Press, ISBN 978-1-999-61200-9
• Hart, Anne (2004), Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot, London: Harper and Collins
• Kretzschmar, Judith; Stoppe, Sebastian; Vollberg, Susanne, eds. (2016), Hercule Poirot trifft Miss Marple. Agatha Christie intermedial, Darmstadt: Büchner, ISBN 978-3-941310-48-3.
• Osborne, Charles (1982), The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, London: Collins

External links[edit]

• Official Agatha Christie website
• A collection of public domain Poirot works as eBooks at Standard Ebooks
• Hercule Poirot on IMDb
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles at Project Gutenberg
• Listen to Orson Welles in «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»
• Listen to the 1945 Hercule Poirot radio program
• Wiktionary definition of Edgar Allan Poe’s «ratiocination»

“	Hercule Poirot’s methods are his own. Order and method, and ‘the little gray cells’.	”
—Hercule Poirot, The Big Four

Hercule Poirot (pronounced in English ɛʀkyl pwaʀo) is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie.

Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie’s most famous and long-lived characters: he appeared in 33 novels and 54 short stories.

Poirot has been portrayed on screen, for films and TV, by various actors including Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh and John Malkovich.

Overview

Influences

His character was based on two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans’ Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London. A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In An Autobiography Christie admits that «I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp.» Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason’s fictional detective – Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté-who, first appearing in the 1910 novel «At the Villa Rose,» predates the writing of the first Poirot novel by six years. In chapter 4 of the second Inspector Hanaud novel, «The House of the Arrow» (1924), Hanaud declares sanctimoniously to the heroine, «You are wise, Mademoiselle… For, after all, I am Hanaud. There is only one.»

Poirot’s being a Belgian, unlike the above-mentioned models, is clearly the result of the first book being written in 1916 (though only published in 1920). Not only did his coming from a country occupied by Germany provide a very good reason why such a skilled detective would be out of work and available to solve mysteries at an English country house, but also at the time of writing it was considered patriotic to express sympathy with the Belgians – since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain’s casus belli for entering World War I.

Popularity

His first published appearance was in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published 1920) and his last was in Curtain (published 1975, the year before Christie died). On publication of this novel, Poirot was the only fictional character to be given an obituary in The New York Times; August 6, 1975 «Hercule Poirot is Dead; Famed Belgian Detective».

Appearance and personal attributes

Here is how Captain Arthur Hastings first describes Poirot:

«He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police.»

(The Mysterious Affair at Styles)

In the later books, the limp is not mentioned. Poirot has dark hair, which he dyes later in life (though many of his screen incarnations are portrayed as bald or balding), and green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining «like a cat’s» when he is struck by a clever idea. Frequent mention is made of his patent-leather shoes, damage to which is frequently a subject of (for the reader, comical) misery on his part. Poirot’s appearance, regarded as fastidious during his early career, is hopelessly out of fashion later in his career.

«The plane dropped slightly. «Mon estomac,» thought Hercule Poirot, and closed his eyes determinedly.»

(Death in the Clouds)

Among Poirot’s most significant personal attributes is the sensitivity of this stomach. He suffers from seasickness, and in Death in the Clouds believes that his air sickness prevents him from being more alert at the time of the murder. Later in his life, we are told:

«Always a man who had taken his stomach seriously, he was reaping his reward in old age. Eating was not only a physical pleasure, it was also an intellectual research.»

(Mrs McGinty’s Dead)

Habits

Main article: Poirot and his drinks

Main article: Poirot and his food

Throughout the books and also in protrayals, Poirot is shown having in various quirks in regards to what he drinks and what he eats. He is also extremely punctual and carries a turnip pocket watch almost to the end of his career.

Methods

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based detective, depending on logic, which is represented in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of «the little grey cells» and «order and method». Irritating to Hastings (and, sometimes, to the reader) is the fact that Poirot will sometimes conceal from him important details of his plans, as in The Big Four where Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator so there is no one for Poirot to mislead.

As early as The Murder on the Links, where he still largely depends on clues, Poirot mocks a rival detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues that had been established in detective fiction by the example of Sherlock Holmes: footprints, fingerprints and cigar ash. From this point on he establishes himself as a psychological detective who proceeds not by a painstaking examination of the crime scene, but by enquiring either into the nature of the victim or the murderer. Central to his behaviour in the later novels is the underlying assumption that particular crimes are only committed by particular types of person.

Poirot’s methods focus on getting people to talk. Early in the novels, he frequently casts himself in the role of «Papa Poirot», a benign confessor, especially to young women. Later he lies freely in order gain the confidences of other characters, either inventing his own reason for being interested in the case or a family excuse for pursuing a line of questioning.

«To this day Harold is not quite sure what made him suddenly pour out the whole story to a little man to whom he had only spoken a few minutes before.»

Poirot is also willing to appear more foreign or vain than he really is in an effort to make people underestimate him. He admits as much:

«It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say – a foreigner – he can’t even speak English properly. […] Also I boast! An Englishman he says often, «A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much. […] And so, you see, I put people off their guard.»

In the later novels Christie often uses the word mountebank when Poirot is being assessed by other characters, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud.

All these techniques help Poirot attain his principal target: «For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away …»

Recurring characters

Arthur Hastings

Hastings first meets Poirot during his years as a private detective in Europe and almost immediately after they both arrive in England, becomes his life-long partner and appears in many of the novels and stories. Poirot regarded Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal and for his tendency to unknowingly «stumble» onto the truth.

It must also be said that Hastings was a man who was capable of great bravery and courage when the road got rough, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and possessing unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. When forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he chose Poirot.

The two were an airtight team until Hastings met and married Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, which was not objectionable in the late Victorian, Edwardian world. They later emigrated to Argentina leaving Poirot behind as a «very unhappy old man.» Poirot and Hastings are at last reunited in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. They are also reunited in The A.B.C. Murders
when Hastings arrives in England for business.

Ariadne Oliver

The frequently recurring detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie’s humorous self-caricature. Like Agatha Christie, she isn’t overly fond of the detective she is most famous for creating – in Ariadne’s case a Finn Sven Hjerson. We never learn about her husband but we know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of the Hallowe’en party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle and in every appearance by her much is made of the clothes and hats she wears. She has a maid called Milly who prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer but does nothing to prevent her aggravating employer from becoming too much of a burden on others.

She has authored over fifty-six novels and she has a great dislike of people taking and modifying her story characters. She is also the only one in Poirot’s universe to have noted that «It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B.» She first met Poirot when they put their Cards on the Table and has been bothering him ever since.

Miss Felicity Lemon

Poirot’s secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only two mistakes she is ever recorded making are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electric bill. Poirot described her as being «Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration.» She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also once worked for the government agent-turned-philanthropist, Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot’s numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown.

Inspector James Japp

Japp is an Inspector from Scotland Yard and appears in many of the stories, trying to solve the cases Poirot is working on. Japp is an outgoing, loud and sometimes inconsiderate man by nature and his relationship with the bourgeois Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot’s world. He first met Poirot in Belgium, 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery and later that year joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps him solve a case and lets him take the credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail being supplied with cases that would interest him.

Georges

George, normally addressed by Poirot as Georges (we are never told his last name) is a classic English valet who first entered Poirot’s employ in 1923 and didn’t leave his side until the 1970s, shortly before Poirot’s death. A competent, matter-of-fact man with extensive knowledge of the English aristocracy and absolutely no imagination, Georges provides a steady contrast to Hastings.

Hercule Poirot’s life

Family and childhood

«I suppose you know pretty well everything there is to know about Poirot’s family by this time.»

(James Sheppard to his sister, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

It is difficult to draw any concrete conclusions about Poirot’s family due to the fact that Poirot often supplies false or misleading information about himself or his background in order to assist him in obtaining information relevant to a particular case. In chapter 21 of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , for example, we learn that he has been talking about a mentally disabled nephew: this proves to be a ruse so that he can find out about homes for the mentally unfit … but that does not mean that Poirot does not have such a nephew. In Dumb Witness, he regales us with stories of his elderly invalid mother as a pretense to investigate the local nurses. In The Big Four Hastings believes that he meets Achille Poirot who (in an apparent parody of Mycroft Holmes) is evidently his smarter brother. On this occasion, Achille is almost certainly Poirot himself in disguise (Poirot speaks in Chapter 18 of having sent Achille «back to the land of myths»), but this does not conclusively demonstrate that Poirot does not have a brother, or even a brother called Achille. Any evidence regarding Poirot for which Poirot himself is the source is, therefore, most unreliable. Achille Poirot is also mentioned by Dr. Burton in the prelude to The Labours of Hercules.
Poirot was apparently born in Spa, Belgium and, based on the conjecture that he was thirty at the time of his retirement from the Belgian police force at the time of the outbreak of the First World War, it is suggested that he was born in the mid-1880s. This is all extremely vague, as Poirot is thought to be an old man in his dotage even in the early Poirot novels, and in An Autobiography Christie admitted that she already imagined him to be an old man in 1920. (At the time, of course, she had no idea she would be going on writing Poirot books for many decades to come.) Much of the suggested dating for Poirot’s age is, therefore, post-rationalisation on the part of those attempting to make sense of his extraordinarily long career.

Poirot is a Roman Catholic by birth, and retains a strong sense of Catholic morality later in life. Not much is known of Poirot’s childhood other than he once claimed in Three Act Tragedy to have been from a large family with little wealth. In Taken at the Flood, he further claimed to have been raised and educated by nuns, raising the possibility that he (and any siblings) were orphaned.

Poirot’s police years

«Gustave […] was not a policeman. I have dealt with policemen all my life and I know. He could pass as a detective to an outsider but not to a man who was a policeman himself.» — Hercule Poirot in «The Erymanthian Boar» (1940).

As an adult, Poirot joined the Belgian police force. Very little mention is made in Christie’s work about this part of his life, but in «The Nemean Lion» (1939) Poirot himself refers to a Belgian case of his in which «a wealthy soap manufacturer […] poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary». We do not know whether this case resulted in a successful prosecution or not; moreover, Poirot is not above lying in order to produce a particular effect in the person to whom he is speaking, so this evidence is not reliable.

Inspector Japp gives some insight into Poirot’s career with the Belgian police when introducing him to a colleague:

«You’ve heard me speak of Mr. Poirot? It was in 1904 he and I worked together – the Abercrombie forgery case – you remember he was run down in Brussels. Ah, those were the days Moosier. Then, do you remember «Baron» Altara? There was a pretty rogue for you! He eluded the clutches of half the police in Europe. But we nailed him in Antwerp – thanks to Mr. Poirot here.»

Perhaps this is enough evidence to suggest that Poirot’s police career was a successful one.

In the short story The Chocolate Box (1923) Poirot provides Captain Arthur Hastings with an account of what he considers to be his only failure. Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime «innumerable» times:

«I have been called in too late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been struck down with illness just as I was on the point of success.»

Nevertheless, he regards the case in «The Chocolate Box», which took place in 1893, as his only actual failure of detection. Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth.

It was also in this period that Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof onto the public below.

Poirot has retired from the Belgian police force by the time that he meets Hastings in 1916 on the case retold in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

It should be noted that Poirot is a French-speaking Belgian, i.e. a Walloon; but there can hardly be found any occasion where he refers to himself as such or is so referred to by others. At the time of writing, at least of the earlier books where the character was defined, non-Belgians such as Agatha Christie were far less aware than nowadays of the deep linguistic divide in Belgian society.

Career as a private detective

«I had called in at my friend Poirot’s rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot.»

During World War I, Poirot left Belgium for Britain as a refugee. It was here, on 16 July 1916, that he again met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published: The Mysterious Affair at Styles. After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service, and undertook cases for the British government, including foiling the attempted abduction of the Prime Minister.

After the war, Poirot became a free agent and began undertaking civilian cases. He moved into what became both his home and work address, 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1. It was chosen by Poirot for its symmetry. His first case was «The Affair at the Victory Ball«, which saw Poirot enter the high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Between the world wars, Poirot traveled all over Europe and the Middle East investigating crimes and murders. Most of his cases happened during this period and he was at the height of his powers at this point in his life. Murder on the Links saw the Belgian pit his grey cells against a French murderer. In the Middle East, he solved Murder on the Orient Express (though the bulk of the story takes place in the territory of the former Yugoslavia), the Death on the Nile, and the Murder in Mesopotamia with ease and even survived Appointment with Death. However, he did not travel to the Americas or Australia, probably due to his seasickness.

«It is this villainous sea that troubles me! The mal de mer – it is horrible suffering!»

It was during this time he met the Countess Vera Rossakoff, a glamorous jewel thief. The history of the Countess is, like Poirot’s, steeped in mystery. She claims to have been a member of the Russian aristocracy before the Russian Revolution and suffered greatly as a result, but how much of that story is true is an open question. Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff has told several wildly varying accounts of her early life. Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice.

«It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the Countess held for him.»

Although letting the Countess escape may be morally questionable, that impulse to take the law into his own hands was far from unique. In «The Nemean Lion», he sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, and saved her from having to face justice by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who himself was plotting murder and was unwise enough to let Poirot discover this. Poirot even sent Miss Carnaby two hundred pounds as a final payoff before her dog kidnapping campaign came to an end. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he allowed the murderer to escape justice through suicide and then ensured the truth was never known to spare the feelings of the murderer’s relatives. In «The Augean Stables» he helped the government to cover up vast corruption, even though it might be considered more honest to let the truth come out.

After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called «Labours of Hercules» (see next section) he very rarely traveled abroad during his later career.

Retirement

«That’s the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna’s farewell performance won’t be in it with yours, Poirot.»

There is a great deal of confusion about Poirot’s retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot’s private detective agency take place before his retirement to grow marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It has been said that twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in «The Capture of Cerberus» to the fact that there has been a gap of twenty years between Poirot’s previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the Labours precede the events in Roger Ackroyd, then the Roger Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years later than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the Labours takes place on one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four (1927), which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of Peril at End House (1932). He is certainly retired at the time of Three Act Tragedy (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and comes repeatedly out of it thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. Nevertheless, he continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man’s Folly, which take place in the mid-1950s. It is, therefore, better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot’s retirement, but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required.

One thing that is consistent about Poirot’s retirement is that his fame declines during it so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters (especially younger ones) do not recognise either him or his name:

«I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.»

The revelation left Mrs. Summerhayes unmoved.

«What a lovely name,» she said kindly. «Greek, isn’t it?»

(Poirot to Maureen Summerhayes, Mrs McGinty’s Dead)

Post World War

«He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past.»

Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with Three Act Tragedy (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a sub-genre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of a main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In Cat Among the Pigeons Poirot’s entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of the fact that Christie was by now heartily sick of him it is difficult to assess. There is certainly a case for saying that Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which are not Poirot novels at all but so easily could have been, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of Poirot himself within the Poirot sequence.

Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot’s retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic problems as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand.

Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator) becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up and coming generation’s young people. In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings on in a student hostel, while in the Third Girl he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself.

«You’re too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don’t want to be rude but – there it is. You’re too old. I’m really very sorry.»

Death

Poirot dies from inevitable complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. By this point in his life he is wearing a wig and false moustache, and also seems to be afflicted by arthritis.

In the book the Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case Hastings finds a manuscript written by Poirot, within the confines of the script is a confession that Poirot has committed murder.

He also states that since he has become something that he has always opposed and fought, he neglects to take his heart medication, which subsequently causes his death.

With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked (a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was) moved the body back to Norton’s room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his own wig, putting on Norton’s dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot’s room, Poirot shot him – with perfect and unnecessary symmetry – in the center of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate key that Hastings knew Poirot to possess; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot’s own room, but Poirot had changed rooms before Norton’s arrival, and it was to this previous room that he had the key.

Poirot’s last actions were to write the confession and await his death, which he accelerated by moving amyl nitrite phials out of his own reach. His last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance of the inveterate matchmaking that has characterised his entire career.

Major novels

The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles once again before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).

Hercule Poirot became famous with the publication, in 1926, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, «Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?» Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically-acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including such acknowledged classics as Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders (1935), Cards on the Table (1936), and Death on the Nile (1937). The last of these, a tale of multiple homicides upon a Nile steamer, was judged by the celebrated detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time.

The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (aka Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analyzing various accounts of the tragedy, is a Rashomon-like performance that critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard called the best of the Christie novels.

Portrayals

Film

Austin Trevor

Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on film in the 1931 movie Alibi. The film was based on the stage play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Trevor is noted as being the only film version of the character that is clean shaven.

Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent.

Tony Randall

Tony Randall played Poirot in the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders (based on The ABC Murders). This was more of a satire on the character than a straightforward adaptation and was greatly changed from the original. It turned the sharp and observant detective into a blundering buffoon who solves the case almost by accident.

Albert Finney

Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express. His portrayal was considered by many to be the definitive Poirot until David Suchet took up the role. It was a very faithful adaptation of the novel and was, at the time, the most successful British film ever made. It received the stamp of approval from Agatha Christie herself. Finney is, so far, the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win.

Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov played Poirot a total of six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment With Death (1988).

Christie was less sanguine about Ustinov’s portrayal, given that Poirot, written as short, slim, and with coal-black hair, bore little resemblance to the tall, heavy, grey-haired Ustinov. When Christie’s daughter, Rosalind Hicks, observed to Ustinov that Poirot did not look like him, Ustinov quipped «He does now!»

He appeared again as Poirot in three made-for-television movies: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man’s Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Brothers. It also starred Faye Dunaway and David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before he himself played the famous detective. (Ironically, it is reputed that David Suchet highlights his performance as Japp to be «possibly the worst performance of [his] career.»)

Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a series of film adaptations, starting with Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, for 20th Century Fox. This version of the character has grey hair, his moustache is incredibly large, resembling a handlebar type and has a small beard as well. He carries around and talks to a photograph of a woman named Katherine, whom he obviously harbours romantic feelings for. Despite these changes, the character’s personality is generally consistent with the books.

Branagh reprised the role in the 2022 adaptation of Death on the Nile. As of early 2023, a film adaptation of A Haunting in Venice is in production which is set to be released on September 15, 2023.

Television

David Suchet

David Suchet has starred in many Hercule Poirot films and four new ones – Cards on the Table, The Mystery of the Blue Train, After the Funeral and Taken At The Flood – were shown in the UK in March/April 2006. For more information about the ongoing UK television series starring David Suchet, see Agatha Christie’s Poirot. In the TV series, Suchet has worked with actors such as Philip Jackson (Chief Inspector Japp), Hugh Fraser (Hastings), Zoe Wanamaker (Ariadne Oliver) and Pauline Moran (Miss Lemon).

John Malkovich

John Malkovich starred in the 2018 «The A.B.C. Murders» miniseries written by Sarah Phelps, based off the Christie novel with the same name. His appearance resembles mostly an elderly and forgotten Poirot—similar to how Norma Restarick sees him in Third Girl.

Other

• Ian Holm, Murder by the Book, 1986 (TV)
• Alfred Molina, Murder on the Orient Express, 2001 (TV)

Animated

In 2004, NHK (a Japanese TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, as well as a manga series under the same title released in 2005.

The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from July 4, 2004, through May 15, 2005, and is now being shown as re-runs on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Satomi Kōtarō and Miss Marple was voiced by Yachigusa Kaoru.

Radio

BBC Radio

There have been a number of radio adaptations of the Poirot stories, most recently on BBC Radio 4 (and regularly repeated on BBC 7) starring John Moffatt. Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis also played the role in Moffatt’s absence.

Other

The Mutual Broadcasting System created a series of half-hour long weekly episodes featuring Hercule Poirot played by Harold Huber. These were broadcast in the U.S. from February 1945. The stories were original but used the character of Hercule Poirot in an American setting.

Gallery

“	Hercule Poirot’s methods are his own. Order and method, and ‘the little gray cells’.	”
—Hercule Poirot, The Big Four

Hercule Poirot (pronounced in English ɛʀkyl pwaʀo) is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie.

Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie’s most famous and long-lived characters: he appeared in 33 novels and 54 short stories.

Poirot has been portrayed on screen, for films and TV, by various actors including Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, David Suchet, Kenneth Branagh and John Malkovich.

Overview

Influences

His character was based on two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans’ Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London. A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In An Autobiography Christie admits that «I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp.» Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason’s fictional detective – Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté-who, first appearing in the 1910 novel «At the Villa Rose,» predates the writing of the first Poirot novel by six years. In chapter 4 of the second Inspector Hanaud novel, «The House of the Arrow» (1924), Hanaud declares sanctimoniously to the heroine, «You are wise, Mademoiselle… For, after all, I am Hanaud. There is only one.»

Poirot’s being a Belgian, unlike the above-mentioned models, is clearly the result of the first book being written in 1916 (though only published in 1920). Not only did his coming from a country occupied by Germany provide a very good reason why such a skilled detective would be out of work and available to solve mysteries at an English country house, but also at the time of writing it was considered patriotic to express sympathy with the Belgians – since the invasion of their country had constituted Britain’s casus belli for entering World War I.

Popularity

His first published appearance was in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (published 1920) and his last was in Curtain (published 1975, the year before Christie died). On publication of this novel, Poirot was the only fictional character to be given an obituary in The New York Times; August 6, 1975 «Hercule Poirot is Dead; Famed Belgian Detective».

Appearance and personal attributes

Here is how Captain Arthur Hastings first describes Poirot:

«He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police.»

(The Mysterious Affair at Styles)

In the later books, the limp is not mentioned. Poirot has dark hair, which he dyes later in life (though many of his screen incarnations are portrayed as bald or balding), and green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining «like a cat’s» when he is struck by a clever idea. Frequent mention is made of his patent-leather shoes, damage to which is frequently a subject of (for the reader, comical) misery on his part. Poirot’s appearance, regarded as fastidious during his early career, is hopelessly out of fashion later in his career.

«The plane dropped slightly. «Mon estomac,» thought Hercule Poirot, and closed his eyes determinedly.»

(Death in the Clouds)

Among Poirot’s most significant personal attributes is the sensitivity of this stomach. He suffers from seasickness, and in Death in the Clouds believes that his air sickness prevents him from being more alert at the time of the murder. Later in his life, we are told:

«Always a man who had taken his stomach seriously, he was reaping his reward in old age. Eating was not only a physical pleasure, it was also an intellectual research.»

(Mrs McGinty’s Dead)

Habits

Main article: Poirot and his drinks

Main article: Poirot and his food

Throughout the books and also in protrayals, Poirot is shown having in various quirks in regards to what he drinks and what he eats. He is also extremely punctual and carries a turnip pocket watch almost to the end of his career.

Methods

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based detective, depending on logic, which is represented in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of «the little grey cells» and «order and method». Irritating to Hastings (and, sometimes, to the reader) is the fact that Poirot will sometimes conceal from him important details of his plans, as in The Big Four where Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator so there is no one for Poirot to mislead.

As early as The Murder on the Links, where he still largely depends on clues, Poirot mocks a rival detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues that had been established in detective fiction by the example of Sherlock Holmes: footprints, fingerprints and cigar ash. From this point on he establishes himself as a psychological detective who proceeds not by a painstaking examination of the crime scene, but by enquiring either into the nature of the victim or the murderer. Central to his behaviour in the later novels is the underlying assumption that particular crimes are only committed by particular types of person.

Poirot’s methods focus on getting people to talk. Early in the novels, he frequently casts himself in the role of «Papa Poirot», a benign confessor, especially to young women. Later he lies freely in order gain the confidences of other characters, either inventing his own reason for being interested in the case or a family excuse for pursuing a line of questioning.

«To this day Harold is not quite sure what made him suddenly pour out the whole story to a little man to whom he had only spoken a few minutes before.»

Poirot is also willing to appear more foreign or vain than he really is in an effort to make people underestimate him. He admits as much:

«It is true that I can speak the exact, the idiomatic English. But, my friend, to speak the broken English is an enormous asset. It leads people to despise you. They say – a foreigner – he can’t even speak English properly. […] Also I boast! An Englishman he says often, «A fellow who thinks as much of himself as that cannot be worth much. […] And so, you see, I put people off their guard.»

In the later novels Christie often uses the word mountebank when Poirot is being assessed by other characters, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud.

All these techniques help Poirot attain his principal target: «For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away …»

Recurring characters

Arthur Hastings

Hastings first meets Poirot during his years as a private detective in Europe and almost immediately after they both arrive in England, becomes his life-long partner and appears in many of the novels and stories. Poirot regarded Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal and for his tendency to unknowingly «stumble» onto the truth.

It must also be said that Hastings was a man who was capable of great bravery and courage when the road got rough, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and possessing unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. When forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he chose Poirot.

The two were an airtight team until Hastings met and married Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, which was not objectionable in the late Victorian, Edwardian world. They later emigrated to Argentina leaving Poirot behind as a «very unhappy old man.» Poirot and Hastings are at last reunited in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. They are also reunited in The A.B.C. Murders
when Hastings arrives in England for business.

Ariadne Oliver

The frequently recurring detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie’s humorous self-caricature. Like Agatha Christie, she isn’t overly fond of the detective she is most famous for creating – in Ariadne’s case a Finn Sven Hjerson. We never learn about her husband but we know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of the Hallowe’en party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle and in every appearance by her much is made of the clothes and hats she wears. She has a maid called Milly who prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer but does nothing to prevent her aggravating employer from becoming too much of a burden on others.

She has authored over fifty-six novels and she has a great dislike of people taking and modifying her story characters. She is also the only one in Poirot’s universe to have noted that «It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B.» She first met Poirot when they put their Cards on the Table and has been bothering him ever since.

Miss Felicity Lemon

Poirot’s secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only two mistakes she is ever recorded making are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electric bill. Poirot described her as being «Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration.» She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also once worked for the government agent-turned-philanthropist, Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot’s numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown.

Inspector James Japp

Japp is an Inspector from Scotland Yard and appears in many of the stories, trying to solve the cases Poirot is working on. Japp is an outgoing, loud and sometimes inconsiderate man by nature and his relationship with the bourgeois Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot’s world. He first met Poirot in Belgium, 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery and later that year joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps him solve a case and lets him take the credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail being supplied with cases that would interest him.

Georges

George, normally addressed by Poirot as Georges (we are never told his last name) is a classic English valet who first entered Poirot’s employ in 1923 and didn’t leave his side until the 1970s, shortly before Poirot’s death. A competent, matter-of-fact man with extensive knowledge of the English aristocracy and absolutely no imagination, Georges provides a steady contrast to Hastings.

Hercule Poirot’s life

Family and childhood

«I suppose you know pretty well everything there is to know about Poirot’s family by this time.»

(James Sheppard to his sister, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

It is difficult to draw any concrete conclusions about Poirot’s family due to the fact that Poirot often supplies false or misleading information about himself or his background in order to assist him in obtaining information relevant to a particular case. In chapter 21 of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , for example, we learn that he has been talking about a mentally disabled nephew: this proves to be a ruse so that he can find out about homes for the mentally unfit … but that does not mean that Poirot does not have such a nephew. In Dumb Witness, he regales us with stories of his elderly invalid mother as a pretense to investigate the local nurses. In The Big Four Hastings believes that he meets Achille Poirot who (in an apparent parody of Mycroft Holmes) is evidently his smarter brother. On this occasion, Achille is almost certainly Poirot himself in disguise (Poirot speaks in Chapter 18 of having sent Achille «back to the land of myths»), but this does not conclusively demonstrate that Poirot does not have a brother, or even a brother called Achille. Any evidence regarding Poirot for which Poirot himself is the source is, therefore, most unreliable. Achille Poirot is also mentioned by Dr. Burton in the prelude to The Labours of Hercules.
Poirot was apparently born in Spa, Belgium and, based on the conjecture that he was thirty at the time of his retirement from the Belgian police force at the time of the outbreak of the First World War, it is suggested that he was born in the mid-1880s. This is all extremely vague, as Poirot is thought to be an old man in his dotage even in the early Poirot novels, and in An Autobiography Christie admitted that she already imagined him to be an old man in 1920. (At the time, of course, she had no idea she would be going on writing Poirot books for many decades to come.) Much of the suggested dating for Poirot’s age is, therefore, post-rationalisation on the part of those attempting to make sense of his extraordinarily long career.

Poirot is a Roman Catholic by birth, and retains a strong sense of Catholic morality later in life. Not much is known of Poirot’s childhood other than he once claimed in Three Act Tragedy to have been from a large family with little wealth. In Taken at the Flood, he further claimed to have been raised and educated by nuns, raising the possibility that he (and any siblings) were orphaned.

Poirot’s police years

«Gustave […] was not a policeman. I have dealt with policemen all my life and I know. He could pass as a detective to an outsider but not to a man who was a policeman himself.» — Hercule Poirot in «The Erymanthian Boar» (1940).

As an adult, Poirot joined the Belgian police force. Very little mention is made in Christie’s work about this part of his life, but in «The Nemean Lion» (1939) Poirot himself refers to a Belgian case of his in which «a wealthy soap manufacturer […] poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary». We do not know whether this case resulted in a successful prosecution or not; moreover, Poirot is not above lying in order to produce a particular effect in the person to whom he is speaking, so this evidence is not reliable.

Inspector Japp gives some insight into Poirot’s career with the Belgian police when introducing him to a colleague:

«You’ve heard me speak of Mr. Poirot? It was in 1904 he and I worked together – the Abercrombie forgery case – you remember he was run down in Brussels. Ah, those were the days Moosier. Then, do you remember «Baron» Altara? There was a pretty rogue for you! He eluded the clutches of half the police in Europe. But we nailed him in Antwerp – thanks to Mr. Poirot here.»

Perhaps this is enough evidence to suggest that Poirot’s police career was a successful one.

In the short story The Chocolate Box (1923) Poirot provides Captain Arthur Hastings with an account of what he considers to be his only failure. Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime «innumerable» times:

«I have been called in too late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been struck down with illness just as I was on the point of success.»

Nevertheless, he regards the case in «The Chocolate Box», which took place in 1893, as his only actual failure of detection. Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth.

It was also in this period that Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof onto the public below.

Poirot has retired from the Belgian police force by the time that he meets Hastings in 1916 on the case retold in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

It should be noted that Poirot is a French-speaking Belgian, i.e. a Walloon; but there can hardly be found any occasion where he refers to himself as such or is so referred to by others. At the time of writing, at least of the earlier books where the character was defined, non-Belgians such as Agatha Christie were far less aware than nowadays of the deep linguistic divide in Belgian society.

Career as a private detective

«I had called in at my friend Poirot’s rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot.»

During World War I, Poirot left Belgium for Britain as a refugee. It was here, on 16 July 1916, that he again met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published: The Mysterious Affair at Styles. After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service, and undertook cases for the British government, including foiling the attempted abduction of the Prime Minister.

After the war, Poirot became a free agent and began undertaking civilian cases. He moved into what became both his home and work address, 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1. It was chosen by Poirot for its symmetry. His first case was «The Affair at the Victory Ball«, which saw Poirot enter the high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Between the world wars, Poirot traveled all over Europe and the Middle East investigating crimes and murders. Most of his cases happened during this period and he was at the height of his powers at this point in his life. Murder on the Links saw the Belgian pit his grey cells against a French murderer. In the Middle East, he solved Murder on the Orient Express (though the bulk of the story takes place in the territory of the former Yugoslavia), the Death on the Nile, and the Murder in Mesopotamia with ease and even survived Appointment with Death. However, he did not travel to the Americas or Australia, probably due to his seasickness.

«It is this villainous sea that troubles me! The mal de mer – it is horrible suffering!»

It was during this time he met the Countess Vera Rossakoff, a glamorous jewel thief. The history of the Countess is, like Poirot’s, steeped in mystery. She claims to have been a member of the Russian aristocracy before the Russian Revolution and suffered greatly as a result, but how much of that story is true is an open question. Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff has told several wildly varying accounts of her early life. Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice.

«It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the Countess held for him.»

Although letting the Countess escape may be morally questionable, that impulse to take the law into his own hands was far from unique. In «The Nemean Lion», he sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, and saved her from having to face justice by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who himself was plotting murder and was unwise enough to let Poirot discover this. Poirot even sent Miss Carnaby two hundred pounds as a final payoff before her dog kidnapping campaign came to an end. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he allowed the murderer to escape justice through suicide and then ensured the truth was never known to spare the feelings of the murderer’s relatives. In «The Augean Stables» he helped the government to cover up vast corruption, even though it might be considered more honest to let the truth come out.

After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called «Labours of Hercules» (see next section) he very rarely traveled abroad during his later career.

Retirement

«That’s the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna’s farewell performance won’t be in it with yours, Poirot.»

There is a great deal of confusion about Poirot’s retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot’s private detective agency take place before his retirement to grow marrows, at which time he solves The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It has been said that twelve cases related in The Labours of Hercules (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before Roger Ackroyd, and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in «The Capture of Cerberus» to the fact that there has been a gap of twenty years between Poirot’s previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the Labours precede the events in Roger Ackroyd, then the Roger Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years later than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the Labours takes place on one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of The Big Four (1927), which places that novel out of published order before Roger Ackroyd. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of Peril at End House (1932). He is certainly retired at the time of Three Act Tragedy (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and comes repeatedly out of it thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. Nevertheless, he continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in Hickory Dickory Dock and Dead Man’s Folly, which take place in the mid-1950s. It is, therefore, better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot’s retirement, but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required.

One thing that is consistent about Poirot’s retirement is that his fame declines during it so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters (especially younger ones) do not recognise either him or his name:

«I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.»

The revelation left Mrs. Summerhayes unmoved.

«What a lovely name,» she said kindly. «Greek, isn’t it?»

(Poirot to Maureen Summerhayes, Mrs McGinty’s Dead)

Post World War

«He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past.»

Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with Three Act Tragedy (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a sub-genre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as Taken at the Flood, After the Funeral and Hickory Dickory Dock, he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of a main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In Cat Among the Pigeons Poirot’s entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of the fact that Christie was by now heartily sick of him it is difficult to assess. There is certainly a case for saying that Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1957), which are not Poirot novels at all but so easily could have been, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of Poirot himself within the Poirot sequence.

Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot’s retirement is no longer a convenient fiction. He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic problems as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand.

Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator) becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up and coming generation’s young people. In Hickory Dickory Dock, he investigates the strange goings on in a student hostel, while in the Third Girl he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the sixties, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators (especially the private investigator, Mr. Goby) who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself.

«You’re too old. Nobody told me you were so old. I really don’t want to be rude but – there it is. You’re too old. I’m really very sorry.»

Death

Poirot dies from inevitable complications of a heart condition at the end of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. By this point in his life he is wearing a wig and false moustache, and also seems to be afflicted by arthritis.

In the book the Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case Hastings finds a manuscript written by Poirot, within the confines of the script is a confession that Poirot has committed murder.

He also states that since he has become something that he has always opposed and fought, he neglects to take his heart medication, which subsequently causes his death.

With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked (a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was) moved the body back to Norton’s room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his own wig, putting on Norton’s dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot’s room, Poirot shot him – with perfect and unnecessary symmetry – in the center of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate key that Hastings knew Poirot to possess; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot’s own room, but Poirot had changed rooms before Norton’s arrival, and it was to this previous room that he had the key.

Poirot’s last actions were to write the confession and await his death, which he accelerated by moving amyl nitrite phials out of his own reach. His last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance of the inveterate matchmaking that has characterised his entire career.

Major novels

The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles once again before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).

Hercule Poirot became famous with the publication, in 1926, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, «Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?» Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically-acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including such acknowledged classics as Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders (1935), Cards on the Table (1936), and Death on the Nile (1937). The last of these, a tale of multiple homicides upon a Nile steamer, was judged by the celebrated detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time.

The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (aka Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analyzing various accounts of the tragedy, is a Rashomon-like performance that critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard called the best of the Christie novels.

Portrayals

Film

Austin Trevor

Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on film in the 1931 movie Alibi. The film was based on the stage play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Trevor is noted as being the only film version of the character that is clean shaven.

Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent.

Tony Randall

Tony Randall played Poirot in the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders (based on The ABC Murders). This was more of a satire on the character than a straightforward adaptation and was greatly changed from the original. It turned the sharp and observant detective into a blundering buffoon who solves the case almost by accident.

Albert Finney

Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express. His portrayal was considered by many to be the definitive Poirot until David Suchet took up the role. It was a very faithful adaptation of the novel and was, at the time, the most successful British film ever made. It received the stamp of approval from Agatha Christie herself. Finney is, so far, the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win.

Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov played Poirot a total of six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment With Death (1988).

Christie was less sanguine about Ustinov’s portrayal, given that Poirot, written as short, slim, and with coal-black hair, bore little resemblance to the tall, heavy, grey-haired Ustinov. When Christie’s daughter, Rosalind Hicks, observed to Ustinov that Poirot did not look like him, Ustinov quipped «He does now!»

He appeared again as Poirot in three made-for-television movies: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man’s Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Brothers. It also starred Faye Dunaway and David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before he himself played the famous detective. (Ironically, it is reputed that David Suchet highlights his performance as Japp to be «possibly the worst performance of [his] career.»)

Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a series of film adaptations, starting with Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, for 20th Century Fox. This version of the character has grey hair, his moustache is incredibly large, resembling a handlebar type and has a small beard as well. He carries around and talks to a photograph of a woman named Katherine, whom he obviously harbours romantic feelings for. Despite these changes, the character’s personality is generally consistent with the books.

Branagh reprised the role in the 2022 adaptation of Death on the Nile. As of early 2023, a film adaptation of A Haunting in Venice is in production which is set to be released on September 15, 2023.

Television

David Suchet

David Suchet has starred in many Hercule Poirot films and four new ones – Cards on the Table, The Mystery of the Blue Train, After the Funeral and Taken At The Flood – were shown in the UK in March/April 2006. For more information about the ongoing UK television series starring David Suchet, see Agatha Christie’s Poirot. In the TV series, Suchet has worked with actors such as Philip Jackson (Chief Inspector Japp), Hugh Fraser (Hastings), Zoe Wanamaker (Ariadne Oliver) and Pauline Moran (Miss Lemon).

John Malkovich

John Malkovich starred in the 2018 «The A.B.C. Murders» miniseries written by Sarah Phelps, based off the Christie novel with the same name. His appearance resembles mostly an elderly and forgotten Poirot—similar to how Norma Restarick sees him in Third Girl.

Other

• Ian Holm, Murder by the Book, 1986 (TV)
• Alfred Molina, Murder on the Orient Express, 2001 (TV)

Animated

In 2004, NHK (a Japanese TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, as well as a manga series under the same title released in 2005.

The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from July 4, 2004, through May 15, 2005, and is now being shown as re-runs on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Satomi Kōtarō and Miss Marple was voiced by Yachigusa Kaoru.

Radio

BBC Radio

There have been a number of radio adaptations of the Poirot stories, most recently on BBC Radio 4 (and regularly repeated on BBC 7) starring John Moffatt. Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis also played the role in Moffatt’s absence.

Other

The Mutual Broadcasting System created a series of half-hour long weekly episodes featuring Hercule Poirot played by Harold Huber. These were broadcast in the U.S. from February 1945. The stories were original but used the character of Hercule Poirot in an American setting.

Gallery

эркюль пуаро

Agatha Christie’s Poirot
Genre	Crime drama
Based on	Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie
Screenplay by	Clive Exton and others
Starring	David Suchet
Composers	Christopher Gunning (series 1–9) Stephen McKeon (series 10–11) Christian Henson (series 12–13)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	13
No. of episodes	70 (list of episodes)
Production
Producers	Brian Eastman and others
Running time	36 x ~50 minutes 34 x ~89–102 minutes
Production companies	LWT (1989–2002) LWT Productions (1989–1996) Granada Productions (2002–2008) Agatha Christie Ltd. (1989–2013) ITV Productions (2008–2009) ITV Studios (2009–2013) WGBH Boston (2008–2013) Carnival Films (1993–1994) Mittal Productions (1990–2009) Picture Partnership Productions (1994–1996)
Distributor	LWT International (1989–1992) Granada LWT International (1993–1995) British Independent Television Enterprises (1995–1996) Granada Media International (2000) Granada International (2001–2008) ITV Studios Global Entertainment (2009–2013)
Release
Original network	ITV
Original release	8 January 1989 – 13 November 2013

Poirot (also known as Agatha Christie’s Poirot) is a British mystery drama television programme that aired on ITV from 8 January 1989 to 13 November 2013. David Suchet starred as the eponymous detective, Agatha Christie’s fictional Hercule Poirot. Initially produced by LWT, the series was later produced by ITV Studios. The series also aired on VisionTV in Canada and on PBS and A&E in the United States.

The programme ran for 13 series and 70 episodes in total; each episode was adapted from a novel or short story by Christie that featured Poirot, and consequently in each episode Poirot is both the main detective in charge of the investigation of a crime (usually murder) and the protagonist who is at the centre of most of the episode’s action. At the programme’s conclusion, which finished with «Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case» (based on the 1975 novel Curtain, the final Poirot novel),^[1] every major literary work by Christie that featured the title character had been adapted.^[2]

Cast[edit]

David Suchet was cast as the eponymous role Hercule Poirot. He was portrayed, especially in the earlier seasons, alongside Hugh Fraser as the closest friend of Poirot, Captain Arthur Hastings, as well as Pauline Moran playing Poirot’s clever secretary Felicity Lemon and Philip Jackson depicting Poirot’s longtime associate Inspector James Japp. However, towards the later seasons, other characters, such as Poirot’s English butler George played by David Yelland and a crime novelist Ariadne Oliver played by Zoë Wanamaker, feature and become prominent. Several actors have played multiple parts specific to certain episodes, including Nicholas Farrell and Beatie Edney.

List of main and recurring Poirot characters, with actors, by series (season)

Character	Series
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
Hercule Poirot	David Suchet
Captain Arthur Hastings	Hugh Fraser		Hugh Fraser
Chief Inspector James Japp	Philip Jackson		Philip Jackson
Miss Felicity Lemon	Pauline Moran		Pauline Moran		Pauline Moran
Detective Inspector Jameson	John Cording
Countess Vera Rossakoff		Kika Markham		Orla Brady
Sergeant Coombes		Steve Delaney		Dale Rapley
Ariadne Oliver		Zoë Wanamaker
George		David Yelland
Superintendent Harold Spence		Richard Hope

Episodes[edit]

Production[edit]

Clive Exton in partnership with producer Brian Eastman adapted the pilot. Together, they wrote and produced the first eight series, which were highly enjoyable and comfortable to watch. Exton and Eastman left Poirot after 2001, when they began work on Rosemary & Thyme. Michele Buck and Damien Timmer, who both went on to form Mammoth Screen, were behind the revamping of the series.^[4] The episodes aired from series 9 in 2003 featured a radical shift in tone from the previous series. The humour of the earlier series was downplayed with each episode being presented as serious drama and saw the introduction of gritty elements not present in the Christie stories being adapted. Recurrent motifs in the additions included drug use, sex, abortion, homosexuality, and a tendency toward more visceral imagery. Story changes were often made to present female characters in a more sympathetic or heroic light, at odds with Christie’s characteristic gender neutrality. The visual style of later episodes was correspondingly different: particularly, an overall darker tone; and austere modernist or Art Deco locations and decor, widely used earlier in the series, being largely dropped in favour of more lavish settings (epitomised by the re-imagining of Poirot’s home as a larger, more lavish apartment).^[5] The series logo was redesigned (the full opening title sequence had not been used since series 6 in 1996), and the main theme motif, though used often, was usually featured subtly and in sombre arrangements; this has been described as a consequence of the novels adapted being darker and more psychologically driven.^[6] However, a more upbeat string arrangement of the theme music is used for the end credits of «Hallowe’en Party», «The Clocks» and «Dead Man’s Folly». In flashback scenes, later episodes also made extensive use of fisheye lens, distorted colours, and other visual effects.

Series 9–12 lack Hugh Fraser, Philip Jackson and Pauline Moran, who had appeared in the previous series (excepting series 4, where Moran is absent). Series 10 (2006) introduced Zoë Wanamaker as the eccentric crime novelist Ariadne Oliver and David Yelland as Poirot’s dependable valet, George — a character that had been introduced in the early Poirot novels but was left out of the early adaptations to develop the character of Miss Lemon. The introduction of Wanamaker and Yelland’s characters and the absence of the other characters is generally consistent with the stories on which the scripts were based. Hugh Fraser and David Yelland^[7] returned for two episodes of the final series (The Big Four and Curtain), with Philip Jackson and Pauline Moran^[8] returning for the adaptation of The Big Four. Zoë Wanamaker also returned for the adaptations of Elephants Can Remember and Dead Man’s Folly.

Clive Exton adapted seven novels and fourteen short stories for the series, including «The ABC Murders» and «The Murder of Roger Ackroyd»,^[9] which received mixed reviews from critics.^[6] Anthony Horowitz was another prolific writer for the series, adapting three novels and nine short stories,^[10] while Nick Dear adapted six novels. Comedian and novelist Mark Gatiss wrote three episodes and also guest-starred in the series,^[11] as have Peter Flannery and Kevin Elyot. Ian Hallard, who co-wrote the screenplay for «The Big Four» with Mark Gatiss, appears in the episode and also «Hallowe’en Party», which was scripted by Gatiss alone.

Florin Court in Charterhouse Square, London, was used as Poirot’s fictional London residence, Whitehaven Mansions.^[12] The final episode to be filmed was «Dead Man’s Folly» in June 2013 on the Greenway Estate (which was Agatha Christie’s home) broadcast on 30 October 2013.^[13] Most of the locations and buildings where the episodes were shot were given fictional names.^[14]

Casting[edit]

Suchet was recommended for the part by Christie’s family, who had seen him appear as Blott in the TV adaptation of Tom Sharpe’s Blott on the Landscape.^[15] Suchet, a method actor, said that he prepared for the part by reading all the Poirot novels and every short story, and copying out every piece of description about the character.^[16][17][18] Suchet told The Strand Magazine: «What I did was, I had my file on one side of me and a pile of stories on the other side and day after day, week after week, I ploughed through most of Agatha Christie’s novels about Hercule Poirot and wrote down characteristics until I had a file full of documentation of the character. And then it was my business not only to know what he was like, but to gradually become him. I had to become him before we started shooting».^[19]

During the filming of the first series, Suchet almost left the production during an argument with a director, insisting that Poirot’s odd mannerisms (in this case, putting a handkerchief down before sitting on a park bench) be featured;^[20] he later said «there’s no question [Poirot’s] obsessive-compulsive».^[21] According to many critics and enthusiasts, Suchet’s characterisation is considered to be the most accurate interpretation of all the actors who have played Poirot, and the closest to the character in the books.^[22] In 2013, Suchet revealed that Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks had told him she was sure Christie would have approved of his performance.^[23]

In 2007, Suchet spoke of his desire to film the remaining stories in the canon and hoped to achieve this before his 65th birthday in May 2011.^[24] Despite speculation of cancellation early in 2011, the remaining books were ultimately adapted into a thirteenth series,^[25] adapted in 2013 into 5 episodes, from which «Curtain» aired last on 13 November. A 2013 television special, Being Poirot, centred on Suchet’s characterisation and his emotional final episode.

Development[edit]

Actors[edit]

Alongside recurring characters, the early series featured actors who later achieved greater fame, including Sean Pertwee («The King of Clubs», 1989; «Dead Man’s Folly», 2013), Joely Richardson («The Dream», 1989), Polly Walker («Peril at End House», 1990), Samantha Bond («The Adventure of the Cheap Flat», 1990), Christopher Eccleston («One, Two, Buckle My Shoe», 1992), Hermione Norris («Jewel Robbery at The Grand Metropolitan», 1993), Damian Lewis («Hickory Dickory Dock», 1995), Jamie Bamber («The Murder of Roger Ackroyd», 2000), Russell Tovey («Evil Under the Sun», 2001), Kelly Reilly («Sad Cypress», 2003), Emily Blunt («Death on the Nile», 2004), Alice Eve («The Mystery of the Blue Train», 2005), Michael Fassbender («After the Funeral», 2006), Aiden Gillen («Five Little Pigs», 2003), Toby Jones and Jessica Chastain («Murder on the Orient Express», 2010), and Tom Ellis («Dead Man’s Folly», 2013).

Four Academy Award nominees have appeared in the series: Sarah Miles, Barbara Hershey, Elizabeth McGovern and Elliott Gould. Peter Capaldi, Jessica Chastain, Michael Fassbender, Lesley Manville and Vanessa Kirby went on to receive Academy Award nominations after appearing on the show. Several members of British thespian families appeared in episodes throughout the course of the series. James Fox appeared as Colonel Race in «Death on the Nile», and his older brother Edward Fox appeared as Gudgeon in «The Hollow».^[26] Three of the Cusack sisters each appeared in an episode: Niamh Cusack in «The King of Clubs», Sorcha Cusack in «Jewel Robbery at The Grand Metropolitan», and Sinéad Cusack in «Dead Man’s Folly». Phyllida Law and her daughter Sophie Thompson appeared in «Hallowe’en Party». David Yelland appeared as Charles Laverton West in «Murder in the Mews» and as George for the remainder of the series from Series 10 onward, and his daughter Hannah Yelland appeared as Geraldine Marsh in «Lord Edgware Dies».

Multiple roles[edit]

Actors performing in multiple roles in Poirot episodes

Actor	Character	Episode
Nicholas Farrell[27]	Donald Fraser	«The ABC Murders» (1992)
Major Richard Knighton	«The Mystery of the Blue Train» (2006)
Pip Torrens	Major Rich	«The Mystery of the Spanish Chest» (1991)
Jeremy Cloade	«Taken at the Flood» (2006)
Haydn Gwynne	Coco Courtney	«The Affair at the Victory Ball» (1991)
Miss Battersby	«Third Girl» (2008)
Simon Shepherd	David Hall	«Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan» (1993)
Dr. Rendell	«Mrs McGinty’s Dead» (2008)
Richard Lintern	John Lake	«Dead Man’s Mirror» (1993)
Guy Carpenter	«Mrs McGinty’s Dead» (2008)
John Carson	Sir George Carrington	«The Incredible Theft» (1989)
Richard Abernethie	«After the Funeral» (2006)
Carol MacReady[28]	Mildred Croft	«Peril at End House» (1990)
Miss Johnson	«Cat Among the Pigeons» (2008)
Miranda Forbes	Landlady	«Double Sin» (1990)
Mrs Turton	«The ABC Murders» (1992)
Pat Gorman	Desk Sergeant	«The ABC Murders» (1992)
London Man	«The Case of the Missing Will» (1993)
Beth Goddard	Violet Wilson	«The Case of the Missing Will» (1993)
Sister Agnieszka	«Appointment with Death» (2008 [DVD release], 2009 [aired])
Lucy Liemann	Miss Burgess	«Cards on the Table» (2005)
Sonia	«Third Girl» (2008)
David Yelland	Charles Laverton West	«Murder in the Mews» (1989)
George	«Taken at the Flood» (2006) «Mrs McGinty’s Dead» (2008) «Third Girl» (2008) «Three Act Tragedy» (2010) «Hallowe’en Party» (2010) «The Big Four» (2013) «Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case» (2013)
Fenella Woolgar	Ellis	«Lord Edgware Dies» (2000)
Elizabeth Whittaker	«Hallowe’en Party» (2010)
Beatie Edney	Mary Cavendish	«The Mysterious Affair at Styles» (1990)
Beryl Hemmings	«The Clocks» (2011)
Frances Barber	Lady Millicent Castle-Vaughan	«The Veiled Lady» (1990)
Merlina Rival	«The Clocks» (2011)
Sean Pertwee	Ronnie Oglander	«The King of Clubs» (1989)
Sir George Stubbs	«Dead Man’s Folly» (2013)
Danny Webb	Porter	«The Adventure of the Clapham Cook» (1989)
Superintendent Bill Garroway	«Elephants Can Remember» (2013)
Ian Hallard	Edmund Drake	«Hallowe’en Party» (2010)
Mercutio	«The Big Four» (2013)
Phyllida Law	Lady Carrington	«The Incredible Theft» (1989)
Mrs Louise Llewellyn-Smythe	«Hallowe’en Party» (2010)
Jane How	Lady at Ball	«The Mystery of the Blue Train» (2005)
Lady Veronica	«Cat Among the Pigeons» (2008)
Patrick Ryecart	Charles Arundel	«Dumb Witness» (1996)
Sir Anthony Morgan	«The Labours of Hercules» (2013)
Barbara Barnes	Mrs Lester	«The Lost Mine» (1990)
Louise Leidner	«Murder in Mesopotamia» (2002)
Tim Stern[29]	Bellboy	«Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan» (1993)
Alf Renny	«Third Girl» (2008)
Geoffrey Beevers	Mr Tolliver	«Problem at Sea» (1989)
Seddon	«Sad Cypress» (2003)
Catherine Russell	Katrina Reiger	«How Does Your Garden Grow?» (1991)
Pamela Horsfall	«Mrs McGinty’s Dead» (2008)

Reception[edit]

Critical response[edit]

The show is generally believed to be extremely popular among those who watched it.^[30][31] Agatha Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard commented: «Personally, I regret very much that she [Agatha Christie] never saw David Suchet. I think that visually he is much the most convincing and perhaps he manages to convey to the viewer just enough of the irritation that we always associate with the perfectionist, to be convincing!»^[32]

In 2008, the series was described by some critics as going «off piste»,^[33] though not negatively, from its old format. It was praised for its new writers, more lavish productions, and a greater emphasis on the darker psychology of the novels. Significantly, it was noted for «Five Little Pigs» (adapted by Kevin Elyot) bringing out a homosexual subtext of the novel.^[6] Nominations for twenty BAFTAs were received between 1989 and 1991 for series 1–3.^[34]

Accolades[edit]

Home media[edit]

In the UK, ITV Studios Home Entertainment owns the home media rights.

In Region 1, Acorn Media has the rights to series 1–6 and 11–12. Series 7–10 are distributed by A&E, a co-producer on several of them. In North America, series 1–11 are available on Netflix and Amazon Prime instant streaming service. In Region 4, Acorn Media (distributed by Reel DVD) has begun releasing the series on DVD in Australia in complete season sets. To date, they have released the first 8 series of the show.^[37] Series 1–9 and 12 are available in Spain (Region 2) on Blu-ray with Spanish and English audio tracks. Dutch FilmWorks were reported to be the first company to release series 12, in 2010.

Beginning in 2011, Acorn began issuing the series on Blu-ray discs. As of 4 November 2014, series 1 through 13 have all been issued on DVD and Blu-ray by Acorn. The A&E DVD releases of series 7 through 10 correspond to the A&E versions broadcast in America which were missing sections of the original video as originally broadcast in the United Kingdom. The Acorn releases of series 7 through 10 restore the missing video.

Home media releases of Poirot, showing series and episode numbers, with release dates

Release title	Series	No. of DVDs	No. of Blu-ray discs	Release date	Episode no.	Region no.	Released by
The Complete Collection[38]	1–11	28	N/A	30 March 2009	1–61	2	ITV Studios
The Complete Collection[39]	1–12	32	N/A	15 August 2011	1–65	2	ITV Studios
The Definitive Collection[40]	1–13	35	N/A	18 November 2013	1–70	2	ITV Studios
The Early Cases Collection	1–6	18[41]	13	23 October 2012	1–45	1	Acorn Media
The Definitive Collection	7–10	12[42]	N/A	25 January 2011	46–57	1	A&E Home Video
The Movie Collection – Set 4	11	3[43]	N/A	7 July 2009	58–59	1	Acorn Media
The Movie Collection – Set 5	11–12	3[44]	N/A	27 July 2010	60–61, 64	1	Acorn Media
Murder on the Orient Express	12	N/A	1[45]	26 October 2010	64	1	Acorn Media
The Movie Collection – Set 6	12	3[46]	3	12 July 2011	62–63, 65	1	Acorn Media
The Final Cases Collection	7–13	13[47]	13	4 November 2014	46–70	A	ITV Studios & Acorn Media
Complete Cases Collection	1–13	33	28	4 November 2014	1–70	1	ITV Studios & Acorn Media

Being Poirot[edit]

Being Poirot is a 50-minute ITV television documentary (2013)^[48] in which David Suchet attempts to unravel the mysterious appeal of Hercule Poirot and how he portrayed him. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the same evening as the final episode, «Curtain».

Suchet visits the Greenway Estate, Agatha Christie’s summer home, recollecting how he met her daughter Rosalind Hicks and her husband Anthony Hicks for their approval before he began filming. He meets Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard who recounts how his grandmother found the character amongst Belgian refugees in Torquay. There’s a visit to the permanent Poirot exhibition at Torquay Museum to which he presented the cane he used in the television series.

Suchet acknowledges the first stage and film adaptations of the books with actors such as Charles Laughton on the London stage in Alibi, an adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, in 1928. Alibi was filmed in 1931 with Austin Trevor but is now lost. The oldest surviving film portrayal from 1934 was Lord Edgware Dies again with Austin Trevor portraying Poirot. Suchet notes a conscious decision was made by the film company to portray Poirot without a moustache. Films featuring Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov are also featured. Suchet reveals that he read the books and wrote down 93 notes about the character that he went on to use in his portrayal. The descriptions in the books helped him discover the voice he would use, and the rapid mincing gait.

Suchet also goes to Florin Court, a place that the production company chose to represent his home Whitehaven Mansions. There he meets first producer Brian Eastman, with whom he discusses the set that was built based on the flats, and Eastman’s decision to fix the stories in 1936. Suchet also visits composer Christopher Gunning who had composed four themes for Eastman, the first being Gunning’s favourite. Eastman chose the fourth after having Gunning darken the tone.

Suchet travels to Brussels, where he is feted by the police chief and mayor. He then goes to Ellezelles, which claims to be the birthplace of Poirot, and he is shown a birth certificate as proof. It says the date was 1 April, «April Fools’ Day» (no year mentioned). Finally, Suchet travels on the Orient Express and recounts filming the episode «Dead Man’s Folly» last at Greenway to finish on a high note.

Novels or stories not included in the series[edit]

Suchet was proud to have completed the entire Poirot canon by the time of the broadcast of the final episode, only slightly short of the target he had set himself (in a 2007 interview) of completing the entire canon before his 65th birthday.^[49]

The short stories and novellas «The Submarine Plans», «The Market Basing Mystery», «Christmas Adventure», «The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest», «The Second Gong», «The Incident of the Dog’s Ball», and «Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly» were not filmed in their original short story format, as Agatha Christie later rewrote these stories as novellas or novels (The Incredible Theft, Murder in the Mews, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The Mystery of the Spanish Chest, Dead Man’s Mirror, Dumb Witness, and Dead Man’s Folly respectively) which were made into episodes.

Unlike the other Poirot short story collections, where each story was adapted into a 1-hour episode, the collection entitled The Labours of Hercules (consisting of twelve short stories linked by an initial scene-setting story and a broad running theme) was adapted into a single 2-hour film. The end result drew heavily on some of the stories; other stories contributed only minor details. The original version of «The Capture of Cerberus», unpublished until 2009, was not used at all. Also incorporated into this single film was a character with the surname Lemesurier, as a nod to the short story «The Lemesurier Inheritance», which has otherwise not been included in the Poirot series.

One other short story, «The Regatta Mystery», is not included in the Suchet series, as it is not generally considered part of the Poirot canon. First published in issue 546 of the Strand Magazine in June 1936 under the title «Poirot and the Regatta Mystery» (and illustrated by Jack M. Faulks), the story was later rewritten by Christie to change the detective from Hercule Poirot to Parker Pyne. It was as a Parker Pyne mystery that the story was first published in book format in The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (published in the United States in 1939). Although the story is now associated with Parker Pyne, it was included in the 2008 omnibus volume Hercule Poirot: the Complete Short Stories, which was the first public association of the story with Hercule Poirot since the original Strand Magazine publication of 1936.

Aside from «Poirot and the Regatta Mystery», the one authentic Hercule Poirot story not included in any form, whole or partial, in the Agatha Christie’s Poirot series is the 1930 play Black Coffee. Although it was adapted into a novel in 1998, with the permission of the Christie Estate, it was not previously available in novel format. David Suchet did give a live reading of the original play version for the Agatha Christie Theatre Company and therefore felt that he had done justice to the entire authentic canon.^[50][51]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать грубую лексику.

На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать разговорную лексику.

Эркюль Пуаро

Эркюля Пуаро

Эркюлем Пуаро

Эркюлю Пуаро

Эркюле Пуаро

Trust the little grey cells, as Hercule Poirot advised.

Воспользуйтесь «серыми клетками», как советовал Эркюль Пуаро.

He’s Hercule Poirot, private detective.

The actors who played Hercule Poirot the best.

The ingenuity of Hercule Poirot shall defeat your enemies.

Изобретательность Эркюля Пуаро победит ваших врагов.

The moral of the story being never have a drink with Hercule Poirot.

Call me Hercule Poirot, but I reckon that’s blunt enough.

Обзывайте меня Эркюлем Пуаро, но, думаю, он достаточно тупой.

Hercule Poirot is a man of his word, even if the playwright is not.

Эркюль Пуаро — человек слова, даже если пьеса дурна.

Hercule Poirot… he is not obese.

Hercule Poirot does not joke, monsieur.

And Hercule Poirot, he is always right, monsieur.

Now, may I introduce the famous gent, Hercule Poirot.

Теперь позвольте представить знаменитого джентльмена, Эркюля Пуаро.

Hercule Poirot is a detective, not a bodyguard, monsieur.

Эркюль Пуаро — детектив, а не телохранитель, месье.

Well, first of all, there’s my old friend Hercule Poirot.

The mystery that even I, Hercule Poirot, will never be able to solve.

Тайну, которую даже я, Эркюль Пуаро, никогда не смогу раскрыть.

Honestly, sir, it’s such a kick to meet the famous Hercule Poirot.

Сэр, так здорово встретить знаменитого Эркюля Пуаро.

And this is you. Hercule Poirot.

And yet I, Hercule Poirot, did not hear.

In fact, Hercule Poirot is able to create a timeline containing all the important events that took place during the investigation.

По сути, Эркюль Пуаро способен создать хронологию, содержащую все значимые события, произошедшие за время расследования.

The story stars the famous Hercule Poirot as sharp as ever.

Дело запутанное, но знаменитый Эркюль Пуаро, как всегда, окажется на высоте.

She managed to «recruit» bodyguards of the famous detective Hercule Poirot, making a cruise on the same ship.

Ей удалось завербовать в телохранители знаменитого сыщика Эркюля Пуаро, совершавшего круиз на этом же пароходе.

Ничего не найдено для этого значения.

Результатов: 317. Точных совпадений: 317. Затраченное время: 71 мс

Documents

Корпоративные решения

Спряжение

Синонимы

Корректор

Справка и о нас

Индекс слова: 1-300, 301-600, 601-900

Индекс выражения: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

Индекс фразы: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200