Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  The switch from black and white newsreel footage, which fades into the colour of the ‘present’ aboard the ship, is a particularly neat trick, reminiscent of Gary Ross’s Pleasantville (1998), which similarly uses the gradual application of colour to denote the move from media representation to the more complex reality of lived experience.Here, while the black and white newsreel is the media façade that’s meant to add ‘colour’ to proceedings, the real story is far more colourful than the bland pleasantries of the newsreader. At the same time, of course, it offers, not so much the transition from representation to ‘reality’, but rather a transition from one media representation to another – from the chipper news footage of the 1930s cinema newsreel to the (relatively) greater sophistication of the 1990s TV crime drama.

  Yet, while having Poirot and Hastings accompany the bonds is a natural development for a writer seeking to dramatise the story as a fifty-minute film, it is nevertheless here that the episode loses something in comparison to its source material – at least for me. The stuff about asking ‘Miss Brooks’ the time is a clever clue and plays fair with the viewer, allowing them to come to the same conclusion about her real identity as Poirot does. Her performance is also gloriously over the top – indeed, given the Dolly Parton impression, Miss Brooks’s comment about the orchestra ‘going overboard’ is a bit rich. It also allows a lightly done comment on the performativity of beauty, which so unsettles Hastings and which reminded me of an intriguing paper on Evil Under the Sun given by Jamie Bernthal at the recent Agatha Christie conference at Exeter University.

  But, I miss the red herring about the ship getting in earlier, which is rendered redundant in this version by Poirot’s presence on board and by the Miss Brooks subplot. In fact, what these embellishments really throw into relief is that no one constructs a convincing mystery puzzle like Christie – and one tampers with her plots at one’s own risk. As I noted earlier, the Shaw subplot is superficially clever, but brings its own problems (how exactly do you ‘fake’ strychnine poisoning?) Also, the ending suffers from the lightness of touch that all-too-often intervenes to magically render the ‘good’ characters happy at the end of the episode (although Christie is not above doing this herself on occasion of course). This may leave Sunday-night audiences with a warm glow at bedtime, but it’s often a bit too convenient and never more so than here. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if the question on everyone’s lips at 9pm on Sunday 13 January 1991 was: ‘Who in their right minds would make Ridgeway joint general manager?!’

  The Million Dollar Bond Robbery 1923 (Book)

  This short story was first published in The Sketch Issue 1579 (2 May 1923) as part of the lengthy series of Poirot stories that appeared in that paper weekly from 1923-24. In 1924 it was one of eleven stories in the series collected as Poirot Investigates.

  The story begins with the fiancée of Philip Ridgeway, an employee of the London and Scottish Bank, entreating Poirot to clear her lover’s name after the eponymous bonds in Ridgeway’s protection are stolen en route to New York. The solution is an ingenious one – blindingly obvious once revealed, it is kept a surprise by some of Christie’s trademark sleight of hand.

  As ever, Hastings sets the tone with a fatuous comment on a story in the newspaper: ‘What a number of bond robberies there have been lately!’ The proceeding infodump is rather embarrassing. No one talks like this and the opening paragraphs are presumably a necessity foisted on Christie by the constrained space of the short story form. Unusually, Poirot then joins in himself, although his enthusiastic portrait of the great ships from which the bonds have been stolen do at least add a bit of period glamour, reminding modern readers that this is the age of the great liners. This reminded me of the tale’s publishing context – I expect this would have sat well with the society news and features about recent scandal and the latest technological luxuries, which were the staple ingredients in a typical issue of The Sketch. This, as much as anything else, is responsible for Poirot’s growing celebrity status as detective to the rich and famous – precisely the kind of detective who would feature in a society paper like The Sketch, which was essentially the Hello! magazine of its day.

  As well as the increasing consolidation of Poirot’s celebrity status (Ridgeway has heard of Poirot), further character development is also evident. After Hastings’s recent disgruntled realisation (in ‘The Adventure of the “Western Star”’) that he is merely the foil for his vastly more intelligent friend, Poirot has become increasingly aware of Hastings’s exasperation – and although he is hardly contrite, his arrogance captures perfectly the mix of endearing eccentricity and shocking vanity that characterise Poirot’s personality: ‘I observe that there are times when you almost detest me! Alas, I suffer the penalties of greatness!’ Part of the reason we as readers are able to accept this insufferable arrogance is the playful way in which the narration presents it.

  An example is the amusing moment when Miss Esmèe Farquhar (Ridgeway’s fiancée) is unexpectedly announced – Poirot reacts by ‘diving under a table to retrieve a stray crumb’, which he places ‘carefully in the waste paper basket’. The droll contrast between Poirot’s panicked ‘dive’ and his careful depositing of a single crumb in the waste paper basket – between ostentatious elegance and sudden ungainly lunges – endearingly punctures Poirot’s dandyish demeanour.

  I wonder if deflating his friend’s vanity through such descriptions is a coping mechanism for Hastings? Incidentally, the coincidence of Miss Farquhar coming to see Poirot about precisely the thing they’ve just been reading about is a bit of a stretch, but by this point the story has manufactured enough plaisir (in Roland Barthes’s sense of the pleasure inherent in a text’s ability to immerse the reader in a text by assuring him/her that it’s playing completely to the expected generic rules) that we’re happy to go with it!

  The deft economy of Christie’s style is also again in evidence, most notably the detail that Ridgeway’s hair has become prematurely gray from the stress of his situation. Later, the general managers of the bank are described as having ‘grown grey in the service of the Bank’. Unlike the clumsy introduction to the plot that characterise the story’s opening infodump, this is a very telling detail, economically and subtly conveying the idea that Ridgeway’s loss of the bonds acts as a sort of rite of passage – from now on he will be more cautious, less reckless. Now older in his demeanour and outlook than befits a man of his years, his appearance nevertheless reflects the demeanour and outlook of a man totally committed to his profession. Grey hair is the badge of such a man and the irony is that Ridgeway’s apparent irresponsibility has actually physically transformed him into a consummate banker.

  I also enjoyed the lovely overturning of Sherlock Holmes’s famous dictum about eliminating the impossible: ‘You may know, Hastings, I do not. I take the view that, since it seemed incredible, it was incredible.’ And incredible it certainly is – yet somehow Christie succeeds in duping everyone as to exactly how incredible the apparent ‘facts’ of the case actually are. As such, the solution (and the sleight of hand with which it is concealed) is seriously clever: The bonds ‘reappear in New York half an hour after the Olympia gets in, and according to one man, whom nobody listens to, actually before she gets in.’ (‘nobody’ includes the reader here – certainly I’d assumed this to be an obvious red herring, and I’d read the story before!)

  Basically then, here’s another clever puzzle, which could easily have made a satisfying full-length novel. My only gripe is that you really do have to wonder how the real culprit (I won’t give it away) ever thought they were going to get away with it…

  The Actress (Book)

  This story was first published in Issue 218 of Novel Magazine in May 1923, under the title ‘A Trap for the Unwary’. In 1998, it was republished in the collection While the Light Lasts and Other Stories as ‘The Actress’ – Christie’s original title. It’s the tale of Nancy Taylor, whose new identity as the actress Olga Stormer is threatened by a ru
thless blackmailer, on whom she exerts a satisfying revenge. It is also Christie’s most unequivocally (and most unproblematically) feminist statement to this point.

  That Christie preferred the title ‘The Actress’ is significant and highlights how unusual is the morality of this piece in relation to her other work. Nancy has killed a man back in the day – but unlike in several of her later novels, mitigating circumstances are taken into account and the implication is that Nancy is morally innocent of her ‘crime’. Indeed, her victim is ‘a beast of a man who deserved to be shot’. We do get the caveat that ‘the circumstances under which I killed him were such that no jury on earth would have convicted me’ – something she was too naïve to realise at the time. All the same, there is a subversive questioning of innocence and culpability at work in the story. Nancy has killed a man, but is morally innocent. Her blackmailer-antagonist is framed for killing her and thinks in alarm ‘My God, they hanged a man for murder! And he was innocent – innocent!’ Ironically, of course, while he is innocent of the murder he is not innocent, period – he deserves to hang more than the woman whose ‘crime’ he is exploiting. To transpose the punishment he imagines to be in store for her onto himself is a deliciously apt revenge. It is, indeed, the sheer cleverness of this plot that makes the story recognisably a Christie tale – a blackmailer ends up being threatened with the very thing with which he is threatening his victim, even though (for different reasons) neither of them actually legally deserves it.

  On the other hand, of course, the thing that makes it very like Christie is the implication that, morally, it’s very clear who deserves it. Christie’s sympathies are entirely with Nancy – more than sympathy, in fact, since the text works hard to ensure that we are not just sympathetic to her plight but are never once permitted to believe her to be even vaguely deserving of condemnation. Christie’s decision to call Nancy ‘Olga’ throughout quietly signals the text’s support for the new life that Nancy (a survivor, it is implied, of some sort of abusive relationship) has chosen for herself. What is surprising, for Christie, however, is the way a pervading metaphor of theatricality works to endorse a performative and fluid identity for the female protagonist. Olga’s act of revenge is appropriate to her current role in The Avenging Angel – while her understudy acts in the play, Olga is off doing some resourceful avenging of her own and in a manner that brings all of her theatrical talents into effect, framing her would-be blackmailer for murder by orchestrating a scene in which he is found by the maid with Olga’s ‘dead’ body. This blurs the line between performance and reality in a manner of which Oscar Wilde himself would have been proud. The implicit idea of personal identity this brings about is subversive and liberating. Olga can play any part she wants – Olga is not Nancy, nor was Nancy Olga. Indeed, Olga is ‘avenging’ Nancy – the woman she once was but no longer is. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to take from this that Olga’s fixed identity has become autonomous. It is no longer a question of who she definitely is, but of who she wants to be. Identity and performance are conflated via the central theme of acting and theatricality.

  The theme of theatricality is taken even further in Olga’s ruminations about how she might best employ her talents to scupper the blackmailer’s plan: ‘Something between gloves and bare fists is needed. Let us say mittens! That means a woman! Yes, I rather fancy a woman might do the trick. A woman with a certain amount of finesse, but who knows the baser side of life from bitter experience. Olga Stormer, for instance!’

  Remarkably, Olga isn’t even sure if the role she should play is that of a woman. Yes, this passage does back up the idea of ‘woman’ as a defined role characterised by finesse, elegance and the softness of mittens. But this is at least one role among many open to her. As a woman, she can choose or reject this particular kind of femininity as she desires. One wonders what she would have done had the situation called for gloves or bare fists.

  I suppose it could be argued that performativity and female autonomy is endorsed because it represents a necessary intervention needed to correct the moral (rather than the social) order of things and thus actually works to back up the idea that there is an intrinsically correct moral order. In this it is entirely in keeping with the sometimes problematic catharsis of the detective plot. Yet, it is still the case that, in this story at least, the autonomous identity of a female protagonist is endorsed and celebrated. Indeed, the passage quoted above even sets up ‘Olga Stormer’ as a role she has fashioned for herself, rather than the person she definitely is – that is, having stopped being Nancy, her life is as a series of empowering performances, rather than just a series of masks hiding the weak ‘Nancy’ underneath.

  In keeping with this empowering sentiment, the story ends on a note affirming the ascendency of performativity and autonomy over fixed identity: ‘I played my best part tonight, Danny. The mittens won! Jake Levitt is a coward all right, and I’m oh, Danny, Danny – I’m an actress!’ By the end of the story, then, ‘Nancy’, as an identity, is no more and even Olga Stormer has become simply the role this woman is currently playing. What she is, first and foremost, is an actress. What has changed between the beginning of the story and its end, however, is that she is now an actress to her very core – a woman whose identity depends on the script she chooses to write and the scenes she chooses to orchestrate. Moreover, unlike in Christie’s murder stories, such a stance is not condemned as dangerous or deceptive. Rather, it is presented as the road to female autonomy in a world of hubristic male privilege.

  The Kidnapped Prime Minister (TV)

  Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Series 2, Episode 8

  Screenplay by Clive Exton, Directed by Andrew Grieve

  52 mins

  As the ‘The Kidnapped Prime Minister’ is one of my favourite Poirot short stories it should come as no surprise that this adaptation is also one of my favourite episodes of the Poirot TV series. Not only is it stylishly directed by Andrew Grieve, but the slight tweaking undertaken to ensure that the plot fits into the political context of the mid-1930s (as opposed to the mid-1910s) helps to resolve some of the annoying jingoism of the original story – even if it does add a number of inconsistencies, which it’s best not to think too much about! The episode opens at Charing Cross Station with Japp and a group of civil servants anxiously awaiting the arrival of the PM’s car, following the apparent attempt on his life. A newspaper stand displays the headline: ‘Disarmament: Prime Minister to Speak’, alerting us to the changed political context of the adaptation. No longer intent on prolonging a World War in the hope of securing a victory for Britain and its allies, the threat is now that the Prime Minister will not be around to avert a second war. ‘His is the one voice that can unify Europe and stop Germany re-arming’, we are informed at one point. Others might disagree, but I find this a more palatable motive than Christie herself offered. Even so, it might be argued that the very thing that makes this motive tense and dramatic (that we know the consequences of Germany re-arming better than most ordinary denizens of 1936) is undermined by the irony that this benefit of historical perspective is also, ironically, the very thing that makes the entire affair ultimately redundant – modern viewers, after all, also know that the Prime Minister will fail.

  While the anti-pacifist context is altered, however, the theme of the obtuseness bedevilling the John Bullish nationalism of the English establishment is retained to amusing effect. I love the way the ‘attack’ on the PM is described in the papers, for example: ‘It just calls them “ruffians”. In the next paragraph is says “thugs”.’ The self-congratulation that accompanies the ‘rescue’ of the PM from his would-be attackers is also ironic given that this is actually a dupe, a fake display of daring-do designed to appeal to the English love of decisive action: “Well done Commander Daniels. Well done!” says the traitor’s superior, his stiff upper lip visibly wobbling into the ghost of a hubristic smile. The theme of Poirot’s quiet intellectualism versus the unthinking action is also humorously driven hom
e throughout the episode. ‘I don’t want method, I want action!’ cries a disgruntled foreign office official at one point. Informed by Japp that Poirot is thinking, he exclaims: ‘Thinking? What’s he doing that for?’

  As in the short story, therefore, Poirot is the antipathy of this appeal to outward decorum and bravely heroic action. The comic subplot (if it can be called that) involving Poirot’s visit to a working-class tailor of some genius, rather than to a posh purveyor on Saville Row emphasises the point – it is the genius, the little grey cells, that matter and not the outward show of tradition and convention. Japp’s expanded role is also welcome, since it allows the episode to reiterate effectively the function he plays in these narratives – welcome because it shows how Japp is not an idiot plod (to which Lestrade is often reduced in the Sherlock Holmes stories), but rather a sort of mediator between Poirot and the establishment, harbouring an admiration and respect for his friend’s purely cerebral approach but unable to pursue such a line himself because of his beaurocratic training and an emphasis on procedure and visible results. Japp defending Poirot on the phone is thus not only a very sweet moment, especially given his own frustration, but also helps to signify his role as the man of ‘action’ that helps to translate Poirot’s thinking into practical application – a reciprocal relationship, a different way of doing things that renders the contrast more subtle than the ‘police bad’/‘detective good’ dichotomy of many tales in the genre. The old adage that the police ‘would only hamper my investigations’, the fodder of many a crime fiction spoof, does not apply here.