Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Life and Times of Hercule Poirot. Anne Hart
Poirot and Hastings fled their landlady and took Japp out to dinner. But had he learned his lesson? The next case, the murder of a millionaire’s daughter in ‘The Plymouth Express’,3 was later used by Poirot in a tutorial session with Hastings:
‘Remember the Plymouth Express mystery. The great Japp departed to make a survey of the railway line. When he returned, I, without having moved from my apartments, was able to tell him exactly what he had found.’
Poirot was probably apt to cite ‘The Adventure of the Cheap Flat’, which turned into a case of international proportions, as another salutary lesson: never neglect the trivial. How, for example, in overcrowded post-war London, had the young Robinsons managed to rent a handsome Knightsbridge flat for only eighty pounds a year? When put to Poirot by Hastings as a mock challenge, the little detective figuratively sniffed the air:
‘It is as well, mon ami, that we have no affairs of moment on hand. We can devote ourselves wholly to the present investigation.’
‘What investigation are you talking about?’
‘The remarkable cheapness of your friend. Mrs Robinson’s, new flat.’
Another exciting spy story in those ‘difficult days of reconstruction’ is told in ‘The Submarine Plans’.4 In this case Poirot was summoned by the Minister of Defence on a matter of national emergency, the disappearance of the new Z type submarine plans. ‘I remember only too well what you did for us during the war, when the Prime Minister was kidnapped,’ said the shaken Minister to Poirot. ‘Your masterly deductions – and may I add your discretion – saved the situation.’ In Hastings’s opinion, Poirot treated this matter of the Z type submarines far too lightly, but ‘One thing is quite certain,’ he recorded with satisfaction. ‘On the day when Lord Alloway became Prime Minister, a cheque and a signed photograph arrived.’
It must be admitted that momentous cases such as this tended to go to Poirot’s head. ‘You have a client,’ announced Hastings in ‘The Adventure of the Clapham Cook’.5 ‘Unless the affair is one of national importance, I touch it not,’ declared Poirot. He reconsidered, however, when faced with an intimidating Mrs Todd, whose prized cook had disappeared. ‘It’s all this wicked dole,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘Putting ideas into servants’ heads, wanting to be typists and what nots.’ A chastened Poirot decided that Mrs Todd’s cook was a matter of national importance, after all, though privately he cautioned Hastings: ‘Never, never, must our friend Inspector Japp get to hear of this!’
Hard on the heels of Mrs Todd came Mrs Pengelley of Polgarwith to confide to Poirot her suspicions that she was being gradually poisoned by her husband.
‘I don’t intend to let him have it all his own way. Women aren’t the downtrodden slaves they were in the old days, M. Poirot.’
‘I congratulate you on your independent spirit, Madame … I have nothing of great moment on hand. I can devote myself to your little affair.’
But in ‘The Cornish Mystery’ this ‘little affair’ soon got out of hand. On the very next day Poirot found himself investigating Mrs Pengelley’s death. It was a sad experience for this kind and protective man. ‘May the good God forgive me, but I never believed anything would happen at all,’ he cried to Hastings.
‘The Cornish Mystery’ is a good example of Poirot afield. He and Hastings were forever snatching up timetables to find the best trains and reconnoitring country inns (‘a night of horror upon one of your English provincial beds, mon ami’). In ‘The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor’ Poirot was commissioned by an insurance company to investigate a misadventure in Essex. Was Mr Maltravers’s sudden death while shooting rooks entirely due to natural causes?
In ‘The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge’ Hastings, attempting an investigation on his own, accompanied a distraught Hon. Roger Havering to a remote shooting-box on the Derbyshire moors in response to a telegram from his wife:
‘Come at once uncle Harrington murdered last night bring good detective if you can but do come – Zoe.’
Left behind in London in the grip of ‘flu, Poirot kept relentlessly in touch:
‘… wire me description of housekeeper and what clothes she wore this morning same of Mrs Havering do not waste time taking photographs of interiors they are underexposed and not in the least artistic.’
And so on.
A village inn could be a trial, but nothing, in Poirot’s opinion, could equal the sufferings of a voyage at sea. Just such a martyrdom is described in ‘The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb’, in which members of an archaeological team had met mysterious deaths within a month of uncovering the tomb of the shadowy King Men-her-Ra. In the aftermath of these tragedies, Poirot was commissioned by Lady Willard, widow of the expedition’s leader, to travel to Egypt to investigate.
Could the curse of Men-her-Ra have been at work? ‘You must not underrate the force of superstition,’ said Poirot to Hastings, ‘But oh … the sea! The hateful sea!’ The agony of a few days’ voyage from Marseilles to Alexandria, with a camel ride at the end of it, called forth ‘shrieks, gesticulations and invocations to the Virgin Mary and every Saint in the calendar.’
Despite these anxieties about travel, Hastings persuaded Poirot to go on holiday from time to time, but these expeditions seldom provided an escape from crime. A relaxing weekend at a comfortable hotel in Brighton, for example, turned into an energetic hunt for a glamorous pearl necklace (‘The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metro-politan’6); a week’s holiday in Devon became a search for a collection of stolen miniatures (‘Double Sin’7); and a quiet weekend arranged by a surprisingly solicitous Inspector Japp at a delightful country inn (‘Nobody knows us, and we know nobody … That’s the idea’) saw Sunday breakfast abandoned at the stirring summons of the local constable: ‘Gentleman up at Leigh Hall – shot himself – through the head’ (‘The Market Basing Mystery’).
By now Poirot was much in vogue, his discreet services increasingly in demand by the aristocracy (particularly members of tottering European dynasties), by London high society, and by imitators and hangers-on in the demimonde. Adventures in these elegant, sometimes dangerous worlds were of great satisfaction to a detective invincibly bourgeois. Of course the companionship of Hastings, admiringly agog and breathing heavily, added pleasure to the chase.
In ‘The King of Clubs’,8 a particularly complex case, Poirot was retained by Prince Paul of Maurania who trembled to know the truth: could the recent murder of a notorious blackmailer have possibly been committed by the Prince’s fiancée, the dancer Valerie Saintclair? Surprisingly, this commission led Poirot and Hastings to a suburban drawing-room to interview a solid English family, the Oglanders, about certain events that had occurred on the night of the murder.
‘I think that Miss Oglander made a mistake in going one no trump. She should have gone three spades,’ murmured Poirot to an exasperated Hastings, who was expecting more impressive sleights of hand. In future cases, to remind Hastings of the importance of trivia, Poirot was apt to admonish: ‘Remember the case of the dancer, Valerie Saintclair.’
Poirot was, of course, always lecturing Hastings. ‘We all have the little grey cells. And so few of us know how to use them,’ he exclaimed in ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’, patiently taking his Watson step by step through the maze that would eventually explain the bashing in of Count Foscatini’s head.
In ‘The Double Clue’,9