subject: Hercule Poirot - China Stone Texture - China Wall Stone Texture [print this page] Overview Overview
Influences
His name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes' Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans' Monsieur Poiret, a retired Belgian police officer living in London. Hercule Poirot's initials replicate that of the sauce which he happens to like, HP Brown Sauce as he comments in Elephants Can Remember: "Ah yes, that is correct my initials do appear to be the same as such a fine delicacy, a good English creation." 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 ccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp." For his part Conan Doyle acknowledged basing Sherlock Holmes on the model of Edgar Allan Poe's fictional French detective C. Auguste Dupin, who in his use of "ratiocination" prefigures Poirot's reliance on his "little grey cells".
Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason's fictional detectivenspector Hanaud of the French Sretho, 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."
Christie's Poirot was Belgian. Unlike the models mentioned above, Christie's Poirot character was clearly the result of her early development of the detective in her first book written in 1916 (though only published in 1920). Not only was his Belgian nationality interesting because of Belgium's occupation by Germany (which provided a valid explanation of 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 Christie's 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, and British wartime propaganda emphasized the "Rape of Belgium".
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".
By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot 'insufferable' and by 1960, she felt that he was a 'detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep'. Yet the public loved him, and Christie refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked, and what the public liked was Poirot.
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. 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."
This is how Agatha Christie describes Poirot in The Murder on the Orient Express in the very initial pages:
"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."
In the later books, the limp is not mentioned, which suggests it may have been a temporary wartime injury. 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.
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."
He suffers from sea sickness, 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."
Poirot is extremely punctual and carries a turnip pocket watch almost to the end of his career. He is also fastidious about his personal finances, preferring to keep a bank balance of 444 pounds, 4 shillings, and 4 pence.
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 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 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 people.
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 to 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
Main article: Arthur Hastings
Hastings first meets Poirot during his years as a private detective in Europe and almost immediately after they both arrive in England. He becomes Poirot's lifelong friend and appears in many of the novels and stories. Poirot regards 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. Hastings marries and has four children - two sons and two daughters.
It must also be said that Hastings is a man who is capable of great bravery and courage when the road gets rough, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and possessing unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. However, when forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he initially chooses to betray Poirot to the Big Four so that they would not torture and kill 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. They later emigrate to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a "very unhappy old man." Poirot and Hastings are reunited in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, having been earlier reunited in The ABC Murders and "Dumb Witness" when Hastings arrives in England for business.
Ariadne Oliver
Main article: Ariadne Oliver
The 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 the 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 the clothes and hats she wears. She has a maid called Maria who 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 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 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 been bothering him ever since.
Miss 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, although in her defence she was worried about strange events surrounding her sister 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 once worked for the government agent-turned-philanthropist, Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown.[citation needed] In the Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by British actress Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie's Poirot, she was portrayed by Pauline Moran.
Chief Inspector Japp
Main article: Chief Inspector 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 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 Japp 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.
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".
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.
In Dumb Witness, he regales us with stories of his elderly invalid mother as a pretence 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. He may have had a twin brother who would have died long ago in Belgium.
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. Here Hercule Poirot replies that he has had a brother called Achille "only for a short space of time", so the existence of this brother remains unconfirmed even by Hercule Poirot himself.
Based on the fact that he was active in the Brussels police force by 1893, it can be assumed that he would have been born in the early to mid-1870s at the latest, and would therefore have been at least in his forties at the time of the outbreak of the First World War. A brief passage in The Big Four furnishes possible 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."
It is strongly implied that this "quiet retreat in the Ardennes" near Spa is the Poirot family home, and thus that Poirot may have been born or at least in part grew up there. On the other hand, Poirot was working undercover at the time and may have deliberately or unconsciously misled Hastings about his family connection to the area.
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 retconning 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 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,[citation needed] raising the possibility that he (and any siblings) were orphaned.
Poirot 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 had retired from the Belgian police force by the time he met 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. probably a Walloon or Bruxellois; 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, assuming that all Belgians were French-speaking.
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 ab
