Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot. Anne Hart
href="#ulink_d0a368e4-4117-5a06-8b1d-3b45ca0b82ea">3 First published as ‘The Clue of the Chocolate Box’ in The Sketch, 23 May 1923.
4 Some prefer to believe that a triple bluff was played in The Big Four and that Achille really did exist, despite Poirot’s assurances that ‘Brother Achille has gone home again – to the land of myths.’
5 This quotation is from ‘Christmas Adventure’, the first version of ‘The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding’.
6 In one of his last cases, Hallowe’en Party, Poirot expressed a slight change of mind: ‘There were times when he almost regretted that he had not taken to the study of theology, instead of going into the police force in his early days. The number of angels who could dance on the point of a needle; it would be interesting to feel that that mattered and to argue passionately on the point with one’s colleagues.’
7 Also published under the titles ‘The Clue of the Chocolate Box’ and ‘The Time Hercule Poirot Failed’. There is some confusion as to when this case actually occurred. In Cards on the Table, set in 1937, Poirot spoke of it as having happened ‘twenty-eight years ago’, which places it in 1909, but in Peril at End House he referred to it as ‘a bad failure in Belgium in 1893’.
‘He stepped forward, beaming’.
—‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’
Towards five o’clock on the afternoon of 17 July 1916, an incongruous figure advanced steadily upon the post office of the village of Styles St Mary:
… an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg … His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible.
It was Poirot, limping gallantly and no doubt bored to tears. On that fateful afternoon, however, deliverance from ennui was at hand, for out of the post office, and straight into Poirot, there catapulted a large boyish man. As Hastings was later to write:
I drew aside and apologized, when suddenly, with a loud exclamation, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me warmly. ‘Mon ami Hastings!’ he cried. ‘It is indeed mon ami Hastings!’
The surprise and excitement of Captain Arthur Hastings at this chance meeting equalled Poirot’s. Had he not, just a few days before, described this very gnome to Mary Cavendish?
‘I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method … He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but wonderfully clever.’
After further exclamations and explanations, and after promising to visit Poirot at the refugees’ cottage, Hastings returned to Styles, where he had recently arrived to stay with the Cavendishes during the last of his convalescence from a war injury. But what a momentous encounter occurred on that warm sleepy day! No doubt the post office of Styles St Mary now bears a plaque commemorating the genesis of Poirot’s English career? For early the next morning the household at Styles was awakened by agonized sounds coming from Mrs Inglethorp’s bedroom. Someone had poisoned her with strychnine.
‘I am going to ask you something,’ said Hastings to his old friend, John Cavendish, within an hour of his stepmother’s death. ‘You remember my speaking of my friend Poirot? The Belgian who is here? He has been a most famous detective … I want you to let me call him in – to investigate this matter.’ So began an illustrious association that was to span almost sixty years, and so began that celebrated landmark of detective fiction, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Styles!
‘We will proceed to the château,’ said Poirot, when summoned, ‘and study matters on the spot.’ How many millions have since gazed upon the historic plan of the eleven bedrooms and the one bathroom of Styles Court drawn by Arthur Hastings in 1916?1
It was a household at war. Petrol was rationed. Supper was at half-past seven (‘We have given up late dinner for some time now’). Every scrap of paper was saved and sent away in sacks. Only three gardeners were left (one of them ‘a new-fashioned woman gardener in breeches and such-like’). John Cavendish helped with the farms and drilled with the volunteers. Mary Cavendish was up and dressed in her white land smock every morning at five. Cynthia Murdoch worked in the dispensary of the nearby Red Cross Hospital. The formidable Mrs Inglethorp continually presided at patriotic events. A German spy (soon to be unmasked) dropped by from time to time. And, nearby, Leastways Cottage sheltered seven refugees, ‘them Belgies’.
‘WEALTHY LADY POISONED’, trumpeted the newspapers, and Styles was under siege. At the inquest held a few days later at the Stylites Arms, Poirot recognized an old colleague and nudged Hastings. ‘Do you know who that little man is?’ he asked, indicating someone ‘sharp, dark, ferret-faced’ near the door. Hastings shook his head. ‘That is Inspector James Japp of Scotland Yard,’ replied Poirot. ‘Jimmy Japp.’
Thus, in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920, are to be found the archetypal ingredients of many a future adventure – a wilful murder committed amid pleasant surroundings, and a solution at length achieved by a small foreign man with an egg-shaped head. Helping and hindering will be the bluff and energetic Inspector James Japp of Scotland Yard and, faithfully recording it all for posterity, the devoted Arthur Hastings, ever bewildered, ever admiring. It was to prove a great run. ‘Ah!’ Hastings was to write many, many years later, ‘if this could have been that day in 1916 when I first travelled to Styles …’
The Styles mystery and the subsequent murder trial at the Old Bailey occupied everyone concerned for several months. Wrote Hastings:
September found us all in London. Mary took a house in Kensington, Poirot being included in the family party.
I myself had been given a job at the War Office, so was able to see them continually.
It was probably while staying with the Cavendishes that Poirot, no longer limping, began looking for a more permanent home. A later story, ‘The Lemesurier Inheritance’, indicates that at about this time Poirot was asked to undertake a small matter for the War Office. Perhaps he took this as a sign? Why return to the rural obscurity of Styles St Mary? As he later told Mr Satterthwaite, the Styles Affair had given him fresh confidence:
‘I found that I was not yet finished. No, indeed, my powers were stronger than ever. Then began my second career – that of a private inquiry agent in England.’
Poirot’s new enterprise was no doubt launched by the ordering of appropriate business cards and a search for suitable quarters. And, for guidance through the thickets of English customs and manners, who could be better than Arthur Hastings, now invalided out of the army and assigned a London job at recruiting? Firmly bonded to Poirot by the Styles Affair, and still hoping to become a detective himself, Hastings stuck to Poirot like glue.
In time Poirot would become the most fashionable detective in London and would live in considerable style, but at the outset he took modest rooms, often shared by Hastings, and endured certain privations:
Poirot had just finished carefully straightening the cups and saucers which our landlady was in the habit of throwing, rather than placing, on the table. He had also breathed heavily on the metal teapot, and polished it with a silk