by Anne Hart
In these surroundings Poirot commenced his practice as a private detective, and Hastings began to look forward to each evening’s account of the cases on hand. Several bread-and-butter years passed pleasantly enough and then, at last, Poirot received a commission of major consequence. As Hastings described it, he had just settled down one evening to listen to developments in the current investigation, a charlady’s missing husband (‘A difficult affair, needing the tact’), when:
… the landlady thrust her head round the door and informed him there were two gentlemen below who wanted to see him.
‘They won’t give their names, Sir, but they say as it’s very important.’
‘Let them mount,’ said Poirot …
In a few minutes the two visitors were ushered in, and my heart gave a leap as in the foremost I recognized no less a personage than Lord Estair, Leader of the House of Commons; whilst his companion, Mr Bernard Dodge, was also a member of the War Cabinet, and, as I knew, a close personal friend of the Prime Minister.
Clients worthy of Poirot’s mettle at last! And what a case they brought to his sitting-room – the disappearance of the Prime Minister on the eve of the approaching Allied Conference at Versailles. Said a grave Lord Estair:
‘We sought you out on the express recommendation and wish of a very great man of your own country.’
‘Comment? My old friend the Préfet – ?’
Lord Estair shook his head.
‘One higher than the Préfet. One whose word was once law in Belgium – and shall be again! That England has sworn!’
Poirot’s hand flew swiftly to a dramatic salute.
‘Amen to that!’
In the melodramatic episode that followed, ‘The Kidnapped Prime Minister’, which, one wonders, was sweeter for Poirot – foiling a desperate set of German agents, or succeeding where the French police and Detective Inspector Japp had failed? Wrote Hastings of this affair, his eye already on posterity:
‘I feel it is only just that England should know the debt it owes to my quaint little friend, whose marvellous brain so ably averted a great catastrophe.’
Whether the charlady’s husband was ever found is not recorded.
Soon after this coup there occurred a case that Hastings grandly and prematurely called ‘the ultimate problem brought to Poirot to solve’. This harked back to 1916 when Hastings had renewed his acquaintance with Captain Vincent Lemesurier, a fellow officer from an old Northumberland family. Remembering her husband’s account of his introduction to Poirot two years before, Mrs Lemesurier, a troubled and determined mother, sought his assistance in exorcizing the family’s medieval curse. Were all first-born Lemesurier sons doomed to die before inheriting the estate? In the short story, ‘The Lemesurier Inheritance’, Poirot, at work like ‘an intelligent terrier’, proved that they need not.
In the spring of 1919, as England celebrated the end of the Great War, young Viscount Cronshaw was stabbed to death at a grand victory ball. ‘Every twopenny-halfpenny hop calls itself that nowadays, but this was the real thing, held at the Colossus Hall, and all London at it,’ reported Japp, dropping by Poirot’s rooms to invite him to lend a hand in tracking the Viscount’s murderer – or, as Hastings observed, ‘seeking favours under the guise of conferring them!’ Poirot had ‘a good opinion of Japp’s abilities, though deploring his lamentable lack of method’ and, probably realizing how much Japp must have smarted over the case of the kidnapped prime minister, he consented to join in the hunt. In ‘The Affair at the Victory Ball’ he cracked open a sensational cocaine case involving such Bright Young Things as Miss Coco Courtenay and the Honourable Eustace Beltane. ‘Une belle affaire!’ Poirot later pronounced it, celebrating at a ‘recherché little supper’.
With these four cases – the unmasking of a country house murderer, the rescue of a prime minister, the laying of a family ghost, and the solving of a Mayfair stabbing – Poirot’s credentials as a private detective of brilliance and discretion were assured. Furthermore, he had found a new home and a new purpose. For the next half century his energies would be almost entirely devoted to the remarkable crimes of the bloodthirsty English.
NOTES
1 Even though Hastings was rapidly falling in love with Cynthia Murdoch, he misspelled her name on the plan.
3
THE 1920S
‘This street, it is not aristocratic, mon ami! In it there is no fashionable doctor, no fashionable dentist – still less is there a fashionable milliner! But there is a fashionable detective. Oui, my friend, it is true – I am become the mode, the dernier cri!’
—Hercule Poirot,
‘The Adventure of “The Western Star”’
The Great War over, the 1920s were years of economic and social upheaval and an uncertain but flourishing time for the middle and upper classes of England. Poirot, devoting himself to their expensive and interesting crimes, flourished along with them. His moustache, his famous hallmark, reflected it all. Described in the earlier years as ‘stiff’ and ‘military’, it waxed luxurious as the decade progressed.
At some time in the early 1920s Poirot and Hastings – who had acquired a position as ‘a sort of private secretary … to an M.P.’ – became the tenants of a nicer landlady, Mrs Pearson of 14 Farraway Street, and to their sitting-room came a seemingly endless stream of troubled clients. There were housewives, for example (‘Private – that’s what I want. I don’t want any talk or fuss, or things in the papers’). There was Royalty (‘He was a strange-looking youth, tall, eager, with a weak chin, the famous Mauranberg mouth, and the dark fiery eyes of the fanatic’). There were film stars (‘Lord Cronshaw was telling me last night how wonderfully you cleared up the mystery of his nephew’s death’). There were ladies in distress (‘From the costly simplicity of her attire, I deducted at once that she belonged to the upper strata of society’). There were men on the run (‘Poirot hurried to his side … “Brandy – quickly”’). To Hastings’s delight, there was hardly a dull moment.
And if clients couldn’t, or wouldn’t, come to Poirot, he would go to them, usually accompanied by Hastings, seemingly unconstrained by his job – to the superb Park Lane house of an American magnate, for example (‘Poirot picked up a pin from the carpet, and frowned at it severely’); to a country house drawing-room at the moment of a midnight robbery (‘The women were in becoming négligées’); to old-fashioned gardens where ‘the smell of stocks and mignonette came sweetly wafted on the evening breeze’; to an opium den in Limehouse (‘Then there came to us the proprietor, a Chinaman with a face of evil smiles’); to luncheons of steak and kidney pudding at the Cheshire Cheese; to clandestine laboratories (‘I believe that she has, to a certain extent, succeeded in liberating atomic energy and harnessing it to her purpose’); to villas in the suburbs (‘The place was somewhat overloaded with gimcrack ornaments, and a good many family portraits of surpassing ugliness adorned the walls’).
Most of the accounts of Poirot’s adventures in the early 1920s are preserved in the writings of his devoted colleague and scribe, Arthur Hastings, whose usual mode was the short story. Taken collectively, these recall exhilarating days.1
‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’2 opens with Inspector Japp, by now something of a constant in Poirot’s life, dropping by for tea. For Poirot and Hastings it was still the days of the untidy landlady and the metal teapot, but these trials were soon forgotten with Japp’s news of the disappearance of a famous financier. After a lively discussion on rival methods, Poirot wagered Japp five pounds that, without leaving his chair and given the same information as Scotland Yard, he could retrieve Mr Davenheim within a week.
Five days later, with their inevitable winnings, 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 an important case in Poirot’s personal life, his client was Mr Marcus Hardman, a mildly rich collector (‘Old lace, old fans, antique jewellery – nothing crude or modern for Marcus Hardman’). In great distress, he sought out Poirot. Which of his beloved guests, Mr Hardman beseeched Poirot to discover, had stolen a collection of medieval jewels at yesterday’s little tea party? Very soothingly, and with great tact, Poirot arranged the jewels’ return. In doing so he lost his heart to the dashing and daring Countess Rossakoff, a Russian émigrée of the old regime. ‘A remarkable woman,’ sighed Poirot to Hastings. ‘I have a feeling, my friend – a very decided feeling – I shall meet her again.’
‘A pleasing little problem, obscure and charming’ was, in Poirot’s opinion, ‘The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly’,10 a case which saw a happy ending to the kidnapping of a three-year-old son and heir. But shortly thereafter Hastings failed to share Poirot’s satisfaction in another undertaking, ‘The Case of the Missing Will�
��, which brought to their sitting-room a ‘so-called New Woman’, a species the hopelessly sexist Hastings viewed with great suspicion. Miss Violet Marsh was a young scientist and the heir to the estate of her recently deceased uncle, a man unalterably opposed to the higher education of women. Challenged from beyond the grave to find her hidden inheritance within a year, Miss Marsh cleverly hired Poirot to find it for her. Hastings thought this all rather unfair.
‘But no, Hastings. It is your wits that go astray. Miss Marsh proved the astuteness of her wits and the value of the higher education for women by at once putting the matter in my hands. Always employ the expert. She has amply proved her right to the money.’
We next find Hastings brooding over his chronic overdraft at the bank, and toying with the dubious charm of The Porcupine Oilfields whose prospectus predicted dividends of 100%. This prompted the prudent Poirot to recall a cautionary tale of an expensive fleecing, ‘The Lost Mine’. As if to reinforce this lesson, they were both soon involved in solving a scandal that rocked the London and Scottish Bank, ‘The Million Dollar Bond Robbery’.11
Towards the end of this hectic period there came an unexpected lull, a dearth of interesting cases. To cheer Poirot up, Hastings resorted to Watson’s methods and read aloud from the morning paper:
‘Here’s an Englishman mysteriously done to death in Holland …’
‘They always say that – and later they find that he ate the tinned fish and that his death is perfectly natural.’
‘Well, if you’re determined to grouse!’
At that moment a beautiful young lady, heavily veiled, was ushered in. She was, she explained, ‘in a soft musical voice’, being shamefully blackmailed by a brute.
‘The dirty swine!’ cried Hastings.