Agatha Christie's Poirot

by Anne Hart

  When Poirot returned from the Riviera in the late 1920s to take up his life in London once again, he briefly lived – presumably in the interests of a case – without the ministrations of George and under the assumed and unlikely name of O’Connor. During this interlude he established himself on the fifth floor of a building of flats, a self-contained existence which was a considerable departure from his previous domestic arrangements. In the adventure that ensued, ‘The Third-Floor Flat’, we never actually see anything of Poirot’s own flat and its ‘view over London’, and we find him next ensconced with George in new surroundings described by Hastings on a visit in 1932 by an old familiar term: ‘our rooms’. Of the sitting-room there is mention made of a clock and roses on the mantelpiece, of Poirot’s ‘accustomed chair’, and, in Lord Edgware Dies, a glimpse through Hastings’s eyes of the room itself:

  I have often recalled that day in Poirot’s prim, neat little sitting-room when, striding up and down a particular strip of carpet, my little friend gave us his masterly and astounding résumé of the case.

  Poirot apparently gave up these rooms for another ‘retirement’ to Monte Carlo, for on a visit back to London in Three Act Tragedy we find him staying in a ‘slightly florid suite at the Ritz’. As well as an investigation of a set of murders, this visit may also have been used for serious flat hunting, for by 1935, in ‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’, Poirot is firmly re-established as a private detective in London and has acquired the formidable Miss Lemon – complete with her own small office – as his secretary. It is clear that by now the words ‘rooms’ and ‘prim’ can no longer be applied, for when next Hastings visited Poirot:

  I found him installed in one of the newest type of service flats in London. I accused him (and he admitted the fact) of having chosen this particular building entirely on account of its strictly geometrical appearance and proportions.

  This modernist building was Whitehaven Mansions, and as soon as one hears of it one wants to know where it was. One set of clues seems to point towards Chelsea. In Cards on the Table Poirot walked home ‘in the direction of King’s Road’ from Mrs Lorrimer’s house at 111 Cheyne Lane in Chelsea, and was able to ‘come round immediately’ when summoned back to Cheyne Lane next morning. More substantial evidence, however, points to Mayfair. In Evil Under the Sun Poirot’s address appears in the register of the Jolly Roger Hotel as ‘Whitehaven Mansions, London, W1’, and in making his way home on the underground in ‘The Capture of Cerberus’ he ‘ascended to ground level and stepped out into the hubbub of Piccadilly Circus’.

  On reaching home, in Mrs McGinty’s Dead:

  Poirot turned into the courtyard of his block of flats. As always his heart swelled in approval. He was proud of his home. A splendid symmetrical building. The lift took him up to the third floor where he had a large luxury flat with impeccable chromium fittings, square armchairs, and severely rectangular ornaments. There could truly be said not to be a curve in the place.

  In this flat Poirot lived happily, surrounded by perfect order, for the rest of his life. As before, what would have met a caller’s eyes?

  The caller, having arrived by lift at the third floor and pressed the ‘trilling’ bell of Flat 203, would have been treated to the sight of ‘that impeccable manservant, George’. If one was known to George, ‘a smile of welcome’ might flit briefly across his wooden face, but if one was not known, or had no appointment to see Poirot, one would have been invited to take a seat in the ‘square white lobby’ while George retired to convey one’s reason for calling and apparent social status to Poirot. If the reply was favourable, one’s coat would have been hung on the hall-stand, one’s umbrella deposited in the umbrella stand, and one would have been led down a ‘narrow hall’ and ushered with formality into the sitting-room. There one would have been greeted with ‘punctilious courtesy’ by Poirot if one was a stranger or adversary, or with delight if one was a friend. ‘He came towards me on twinkling patent-leather shod feet with outstretched hands,’ wrote Colin Lamb in The Clocks. Greetings over, one would have been invited to ‘Pray sit down’.

  ‘Nice place you have here, M. Poirot,’ remarked Charles Arundell approvingly in 1936 in Dumb Witness. Charles was a rakish young man about town and must have been astonished to find this elderly detective living in an Art Deco flat. Its ‘shining’ sitting-room, which ‘gleamed with chromium’, is described in The Labours of Hercules:

  A square room, with good square modern furniture – even a piece of good modern sculpture representing one cube placed on another cube and above it a geometrical arrangement of copper wire.

  Electric radiators set in the walls fought off the slightest vestige of cold or damp. The ‘square fireplace’ was seldom used (‘A coal fire,’ in Poirot’s opinion, ‘was always shapeless and haphazard!’) but its chromium-plated curb added to the effect.

  On the mantelpiece sat a clock, over it hung a mirror, and on either side of the hearth sat two square armchairs each placed at ‘a definite geometrical angel’. A sofa and a number of upright chairs completed the seating arrangements.

  Poirot was particularly fond of his ‘handsome modern desk’, which sat near the window. ‘Its squareness and solidity were more agreeable to him than the soft contours of antique models,’ observed Hastings on one occasion; on another, ‘Its contents, I need hardly say, were all neatly docketed and pigeon-holed so that he was able at once to lay his hand upon the paper he wanted.’ Its drawers, of course, were locked.

  In a small alcove stood a table (probably the antique table with claw feet mentioned in Third Girl and banished to the alcove because of its age), and other small square tables were carefully placed around the room. On one of them sat a telephone and directory, and on another a box of cigarettes.

  At the windows hung curtains (perhaps made from the purple and gold material Poirot purchased in Assuan in Death on the Nile?) and on the walls hung etchings. ‘These are awfully good,’ said Anne Meredith in Cards on the Table, getting up to examine them. To match the decor one would have expected these etchings to be severe and modern, though contradictorily in ‘The Dream’ Poirot’s taste in art is described as ‘always somewhat bourgeois’ and tending towards the ‘opulent and florid’.

  Also in the sitting-room was a large bookcase. Poirot could become very upset – as in ‘The Adventure of “The Western Star”’ – if a book was improperly shelved:

  See you not that the tallest books go in the top shelf, the next tallest in the row beneath, and so on. Thus we have order, method, which, as I have often told you, Hastings –’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said hastily, and put the offending volume in its proper place.

  The collection on these shelves was eclectic and reflected Poirot’s English immersion. It included a Peerage and a Who’s Who (though George was easily as good as both), a bible, books on psychology, an ‘ancient tattered’ edition of The Magic of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, several ‘volumes of the Middle Ages’ (supposedly useful for counteracting black magic), First Steps in Russian (supposedly useful for understanding Countess Rossakoff), Alice Through the Looking Glass, a well-thumbed book of English nursery rhymes, the novels of Dickens, a bit of Trollope, Under the Fig Tree (the gift, in Death on the Nile, of the novelist Mrs Otterbourne), an anthology of English poetry, the works of Tennyson, the works of Wordsworth, and Poirot’s favourites, the plays of Shakespeare.

  The bookcase also held a collection of reference files (in ‘The Apples of the Hesperides’ Poirot took down ‘a file labelled with the letter D and opened it at the words Detective Agencies – Reliable’); many books on criminology (‘there is no doubt whatever in my mind as to who murdered Charles Bravo’); and an important collection of detective fiction (‘I give American crime fiction on the whole a pretty high place. I think it is more ingenious, more imaginative, than English writing’). As well as the classics, Poirot’s detective library also included works by contemporary authors such as his friend Ariadne Oliver and his fan Daniel Clancy, a
quivering young mystery writer encountered in Death in the Clouds. Altogether this large collection of crime was the basis for Poirot’s own book, his ‘analysis of great writers of detective fiction’.

  Besides the all-important sitting-room, Flat 203 contained seven other rooms: a ‘tiny’ dining-room, sometimes called ‘the other room’ (on display was the fatal knife from Murder on the Orient Express), Miss Lemon’s typing room, Poirot’s bedroom, a second bedroom for guests, George’s bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen. All of these rooms were under the care of a regular cleaning woman whose name we are never told, though we do learn, in The Clocks, that during an absence her replacement brought one of her children with her, which was ‘strictly against orders’.

  Who did the cooking? George could make a very acceptable omelette fines herbes if lunch was needed, and ‘provide a meal of square crumpets richly buttered, symmetrical sandwiches, and other suitable components of a lavish English afternoon tea’, and he almost certainly made the coffee and warmed the rolls for Poirot’s breakfast, but the more substantial meals – when Poirot did eat at home – were undoubtedly prepared in a kitchen below, for one of the attractions of an establishment of service flats such as Whitehaven Mansions was that its tenants could eat at a restaurant on the premises or have their meals sent upstairs to their own dining-rooms. That a certain amount of arranging went on in this system is evidenced by a conversation in After the Funeral:

  ‘I don’t know,’ muttered Mr Entwhistle reminiscently, ‘how you manage to get hold of an escalope like that! It melted in the mouth!’

  ‘I have a friend who is a Continental butcher. For him I solve a small domestic problem. He is appreciative – and ever since then he is most sympathetic to me in the matters of the stomach.’

  In a later chapter we will see something of Poirot’s business, or detective, day, but what might be called his domestic day began with George depositing ‘a tray of early-morning coffee by his master’s bedside’. Upon rising, Poirot performed a meticulous toilette which took about three-quarters of an hour and from which he emerged, ‘neat, spruce and dandified’ to breakfast ‘exact to the minute’ at nine. ‘Poirot clung firmly to the Continental breakfast,’ wrote Hastings in Peril at End House, a case set in the 1930s. This was just as well, since in the previous decade Poirot seems to have waged war with the English breakfast. ‘It is really insupportable,’ he complained in ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’, ‘that every hen lays an egg of a different size!’ In Murder on the Links he became enraged at the toast:

  ‘Ah, par example, c’est trop fort!’ he cried.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This piece of toast. You remark him not?’ He whipped the offender out of the rack, and held it up for me to examine.

  ‘Is it square? No. Is it a triangle? Again no. Is it even round? No. Is it of any shape remotely pleasing to the eye? What symmetry have we here? None.’

  ‘It’s cut from a cottage loaf, Poirot,’ I explained soothingly.

  Poirot threw me a withering glance.

  When he reverted to a more familiar petit déjeuner his criticisms became less passionate. In Third Girl:

  Hercule Poirot was sitting at the breakfast table. At his right hand was a steaming cup of chocolate. He had always had a sweet tooth. To accompany the chocolate was a brioche. It went agreeably with chocolate. He nodded his approval. This was from the fourth shop he had tried. It was a Danish pâtisserie but infinitely superior to the so-called French one nearby. That had been nothing less than a fraud.

  As he drank his chocolate (or occasionally coffee):

  Hercule Poirot arranged his letters in a neat pile in front of him. He picked up the topmost letter, studied the address for a moment, then neatly slit the back of the envelope with a little paper-knife that he kept on the breakfast table for that express purpose and extracted the contents.

  His letters skimmed, Poirot turned his attention to the newspapers. In the early days, when they shared rooms together, Poirot and Hastings ‘pleaded guilty rather shamefacedly’ to regularly reading what Poirot called ‘your pretty little English scandal-papers’, and it was Hastings’s custom to read aloud at breakfast the more sensational headlines from the Daily Megaphone, Society Gossip, the Daily Blare, the Daily Newsmonger, and so on. In later years Poirot seems to have developed more sober tastes though still maintaining, in Sad Cypress, ‘the newspapers, they are so inaccurate, I never go by what they say.’ In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he subscribed to the Daily Budget, in Third Girl he took the Morning News, the Daily Comet and The Times, though in ‘The Augean Stables’, ‘blushing slightly’, he admitted to a passing acquaintance with the scandalmongering X-Ray News.

  The newspapers folded neatly away, Poirot’s working day began. If he remained at home and appointments allowed the time, George often brought him a midmorning cup of chocolate. Lunch was ‘at twelve-thirty if possible but certainly not later than one o’clock’, and was often followed by a quiet half-hour in one of his square-backed armchairs with coffee (well sugared) at his elbow.

  Throughout the day these cups of coffee and chocolate were supplemented by the tisanes and sirops to which he was equally addicted. In the days before George, Poirot prepared his own herbal teas – usually camomile – over a spirit lamp. Hastings found this whole procedure ‘disgusting’. He was not alone in his aversion to tisanes. ‘They were nauseating to taste and pungent to smell,’ declared Colin Lamb in The Clocks. To Poirot they were a panacea for everything. In ‘The Under Dog’:

  … Poirot pulled the bell for George.

  ‘A cup of tisane, George. My nerves are much disturbed.’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said George. ‘I will prepare it immediately.’

  Ten minutes later he brought a steaming cup to his master. Poirot inhaled the noxious fumes with pleasure.

  A glass of sirop – especially sirop de cassis (‘Blackcurrant to you and me,’ wrote Colin Lamb) – was Poirot’s favourite social drink. He often urged it on his guests who, if they had drunk it before, usually refused, as did Inspector Japp in ‘The Capture of Cerberus’:

  ‘No thanks, I won’t have any of your fancy sirops. I have to take care of my stomach. Is that whisky I see over there? That’s more the ticket!’

  Poirot had lots of visitors. In the course of a typical day George answered the door many times and would no sooner get back to the kitchen when he was apt to be summoned forth again by the sitting-room bell. In Mrs McGinty’s Dead:

  Poirot pressed his guest with refreshments. A grenadine? Crème de Menthe? Benedictine? Crème de Cacao? …

  At this moment George entered with a tray on which was a whisky bottle and a siphon. ‘Or beer if you prefer it, sir?’ he murmured to the visitor.

  Superintendent Spence’s large red face lightened.

  ‘Beer for me,’ he said.

  Also on hand were sherry, brandy, port and, at heady moments, cocktails. In The Labours of Hercules Dr Burton sipped appreciatively at a glass of Château Mouton Rothschild, and in The ABC Murders an impromptu case conference was treated to sandwiches and wine. A less satisfied guest was Dr Sheppard in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd:

  Poirot greeted me hospitably. He had placed a bottle of Irish whisky (which I detest) on a small table, with a soda water siphon and a glass. He himself was engaged in brewing hot chocolate.

  Though Poirot himself intensely disliked tea (‘your English poison’, he called it), and sighed with relief when a visitor preferred something else, he recognized occasions when only tea would do. For a nervous witness in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe:

  Profiting by a long experience of the English people, Poirot suggested a cup of tea. Miss Nevill’s reaction was all that could be hoped for.

  ‘Well, really, M. Poirot, that’s very kind of you. Not that it’s so very long since breakfast, but one can always do with a cup of tea, can’t one?’

  Poirot, who could always do without one, assented mendaciously.

  In later years Po
irot virtually capitulated in his war against tea. In Hallowe’en Party, in the late 1960s:

  Though personally deprecating le five o’clock as inhibiting the proper appreciation of the supreme meal of the day, dinner, Poirot was now getting quite accustomed to serving it.

  The resourceful George had on this occasion produced large cups, a pot of really strong Indian tea and, in addition to the hot and buttery square crumpets, bread and jam and a large square of rich plum cake.

  Occasionally Poirot hosted small dinner parties. In Death in the Clouds, for example, he invited two French colleagues and Inspector Japp to dine:

  By common consent, no mention of the case was made during the very excellent meal which the little Belgian provided for his friends.

  ‘After all, it is possible to eat well in England,’ murmured Fournier appreciatively, as he made delicate use of a thoughtfully provided toothpick.

  ‘A delicious meal, M. Poirot,’ said Thibault.

  ‘Bit Frenchified, but damn good,’ pronounced Japp.

  In evenings at home, and if there was no case on hand to concern him, Poirot liked to read. A picture of him in his armchair is sketched in The Clocks:

  On either side of him on the floor was a neat pile of books. More books stood on the table at his left side. At his right hand was a cup from which steam rose.

  Evenings may also have been the time that he wrote, for, besides his enormous reputation as a detective, Poirot also enjoyed a modest success as an author – though his works, including his Magnum Opus, seem lost to bibliography. In Death on the Nile a fellow passenger, Mr Ferguson, said cheekily: