Agatha Christie

by H. R. F. Keating

  But for everyday assistance he now had the impeccably efficient Miss Lemon as secretary and if the rough work of detection was to be done the Home Office was always now ready to oblige with instant labour and the Chief Constable of almost every county was in his debt. Major This or Colonel That was invariably ready to let this brilliant amateur in on an investigation, especially since they were generally conducting them themselves with more military panache than cerebral ingenuity. But most of Poirot’s information came from Detective Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard, little dark, ferret-faced Jimmy Japp, as he is called when first we meet him at Styles Court. He too managed to go on tracking down criminals over an awesome length of time. More than thirty years after the first collaboration he was still at the Yard, though now a Chief Inspector (there’s rapid promotion for you, and after all those successes for which Poirot had let him take the credit), though by that time he had learnt to say ‘Monsieur’ instead of ‘Moosier’.

  Perhaps it is right to add to the list of Poirot’s affiliates Mrs Ariadne Oliver, the celebrated author of detective stories, a lady who bore a noticeable resemblance to that other celebrated crime author, Dame Agatha Christie. And also had some distinct differences, such as hair that was often windswept and a magnificent booming contralto where Dame Agatha possessed, according to one of her biographers, ‘a rather high soprano voice’. Poirot and Mrs Oliver collaborated in a number of cases, Dead Man’s Folly, Third Girl, and Elephants Can Remember. This last, clearly describing a period not long before its publication in 1972, recorded Poirot’s penultimate triumph. He would then have been about 127 and did complain from time to time about the effects of age. But his ‘little grey cells’ – that famous and eventually self-mocked phrase which became the term for the brain adopted by a whole African tribe – were still in fine working order and Poirot was still mightily proud of their powers.

  Pride, even cockiness, was perhaps his chief characteristic. In Murder in the Mews he himself says to the good Japp: ‘If I committed a murder you would not have the least chance of seeing how I set about it,’ a boast not to be fulfilled till the very curtain fell. But the cockiness is not without justification. Poirot is truly shrewd. Listen to him: ‘To deceive deliberately – that is one thing. But to be so sure of your facts, of your ideas and of their essential truth that details do not matter – that, my friend, is a special characteristic of particularly honest persons.’ And there are dozens of other examples every bit as perceptive.

  The shrewdness sprang from an unalterable belief in the rational. ‘We shall know! The power of the human brain, Hastings, is almost unlimited.’ And it is this constant appeal to the rational, expressed or implied, that was perhaps the reason for the tremendous popularity of the accounts of his adventures when the world outside was increasingly swept by gusts of irrationality.

  ‘Order and method’ was ever his cry. And, though on occasion he might spot a clue which lesser investigators had missed, he vehemently denounced frenzied searching for clues as such. As early as Murder on the Links, his second recorded case, he asked the faithful Hastings if he ever went fox-hunting. ‘A bit.’ ‘But you did not descend from your horse and run along the ground smelling with your nose and uttering loud “Ow, ows”?’ Hastings solemnly took the point, though as a matter of recorded fact on at least two occasions later Poirot did actually use his own nose in a plainly clue-hunting way, once indeed to smell the cigarette smoke that was not there, classic instance.

  He liked to work by hitting on a series of ‘little ideas’. That, he used to say, was the first stage. Then the second stage would come, when a little idea proved correct. ‘Then I know!’ It was usually at the ‘little ideas’ stage that he would produce one of those lists of marvellously obscure questions. Why did the paper bag which he had seized on from the drawing-room waste-paper basket smell of oranges? Simple. It had been brought into the room under pretext of containing oranges so that at the right moment it could be inflated and popped so as to sound like a pistol shot fired at a time when the murderer could not have got to the place where the murder happened.

  Little ideas enabled Poirot to conquer one of the gravest problems that can face the Great Detective: how not to solve, since one is pretty well omniscient, each puzzle the moment its facts have been made clear. By having small, but always properly startling, successes early on Poirot could postpone the great success till decently near the end of the book. Then it was: ‘Quick, Hastings. I have been blind, imbécile. Quick, a taxi.’ On occasion he described himself as triple imbecile, and once he admitted to thirty-six times imbecile.

  The rational in Poirot reflected a basic seriousness. ‘I have a bourgeois attitude to murder. I disapprove of it.’ He goes so far, in ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’, one of his shorter exploits, as to claim: ‘Never do I pull the leg.’ That was just not true: he used to tease poor gawping Hastings unmercifully.

  Finally, as in the Who’s Who which Poirot so frequently pulled from his shelves when a possibly illustrious client was observed approaching, let us list the great man’s ‘recreations’. They included bridge (one whole adventure, Cards on the Table, is ingeniously devoted to it and he has a characteristically shrewd observation about those women players who declare with total confidence ‘And the rest are mine’) and detective fiction, of which to judge by his remarks in The Clocks he was an omnivorous devourer.

  But there is one other area of interest (to those of us of a later vintage than Poirot – and given that natal date who could be otherwise? – of almost mandatory importance, though it has yet to be included in the Who’s Who questionnaire): ‘sexual proclivities?’ Well, Poirot was, of course, never married, but if we run along the ground smelling with the nose on that track various ‘little ideas’ do spring up. Why, for instance, was he quite so fond of a duffer like Captain Hastings? Hastings, naturally, bumbled through their long friendship in total innocence. ‘The embrace,’ he remarked when in ‘The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ Poirot had threatened to put his arms round him, ‘was merely figurative – not a thing one is always sure of with Poirot.’ Indeed, in The Mysterious Affair at Styles ‘suddenly clasping me in his arms, he kissed me warmly on both cheeks’.

  Next, snuffle up an attitude to the opposite sex which, set aside some conventional words of praise, was always apt to be indifferent (with the exception of that significantly ample figure the Countess Rossakoff, encountered in several of the adventures) and was more than once actively hostile. ‘Histoire de femmes,’ he exclaimed with biting contempt in the wake of the departing film star Mary Marvell in ‘The Adventure of the Western Star’. Even more significantly in After the Funeral he observed with savage brevity: ‘Women are never kind, though they can sometimes be tender.’

  One type of woman, it comes now as no surprise to find, he was always ready to find tender. In the closing pages of Murder on the Links he solemnly advises Jack: ‘Go to your mother.’ Tell her everything, he urges. ‘Your love for each other has been tested in the fire and not found wanting.’ To the Dowager Duchess of Merton he declares: ‘I comprehend the mother’s heart.’ To Lady Yardly, almost as well-born, he says with a low bow, and in simple French: ‘Vous êtes bonne mère.’ No wonder that when a few minutes later Lady Yardly was found senseless on the floor after her great diamond had vanished she was, in Hastings’ words, ‘aptly ministered to by Poirot, who is as good as a woman in these matters’.

  But there is one more clue. Think about that passage in Peril at End House where, addressing the Modern Miss heroine, he says: ‘To me the natural thing seems to have a coiffure high and rigid – so – and the hat attached with many hairpins – là-là-là-et là’ executing four vicious jabs in the air. ‘When the wind blew,’ he added ‘it was agony – it gave you the migraine.’ Now has the ‘little idea’ progressed to the point of ‘I know’? We shall never learn the answer. Poirot has taken his secret to the grave. And, of course, to know is the last thing we really want. Let him rest i
n peace, aged 130.

  The Agatha Christie Titles

  1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Poirot)

  1922 The Secret Adversary

  1923 Murder on the Links (Poirot)

  1924 The Man in the Brown Suit

  1924 Poirot Investigates (short stories)

  1925 The Secret of Chimneys

  1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Poirot)

  1927 The Big Four (Poirot)

  1928 The Mystery of the Blue Train (Poirot)

  1929 The Seven Dials Mystery

  1929 Partners in Crime (short stories)

  1930 Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple)

  1930 The Mysterious Mr Quin (short stories)

  1931 The Sittaford Mystery (US: Murder at Hazlemoor)

  1932 Peril at End House (Poirot)

  1932 The Thirteen Problems (Miss Marple short stories)(US: The Tuesday Club Murders)

  1933 Lord Edgware Dies (Poirot) (US: Thirteen at Dinner)

  1933 The Hound of Death (short stories)

  1934 Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (US: The Boomerang Clue)

  1934 Murder on the Orient Express (Poirot) (US: Murder in the Calais Coach)

  1934 The Listerdale Mystery (short stories)

  1934 Pyne Investigates (short stories) (US: Mr Parker Pyne – Detective)

  1935 Three Act Tragedy (Poirot) (US: Murder in Three Acts)

  1935 Death in the Clouds (Poirot) (US: Death in the Air)

  1935 The A.B.C. Murders (Poirot)

  1936 Murder in Mesopotamia (Poirot)

  1936 Cards on the Table (Poirot)

  1937 Dumb Witness (Poirot) (US: Poirot Loses a Client)

  1937 Death on the Nile (Poirot)

  1937 Murder in the Mews (Poirot stories) (US: Dead Man’s Mirror)

  1938 Appointment with Death (Poirot)

  1938 Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (US: Murder for Christmas)

  1939 Murder Is Easy (US: Easy to Kill)

  1939 And Then There Were None

  1939 The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (some Poirot, one Miss Marple)

  1940 Sad Cypress (Poirot)

  1940 One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (Poirot) (US: The Patriotic Murders)

  1941 Evil Under the Sun (Poirot)

  1941 N or M?

  1942 The Body in the Library (Miss Marple)

  1942 The Moving Finger (Miss Marple)

  1943 Five Little Pigs (Poirot) (US: Murder in Retrospect)

  1944 Towards Zero

  1945 Death Comes as the End

  1945 Sparkling Cyanide (US: Remembered Death)

  1946 The Hollow (Poirot)

  1947 The Labours of Hercules (Poirot short stories)

  1948 Taken at the Flood (Poirot) (US: There Is a Tide)

  1948 Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (one Poirot)

  1949 Crooked House

  1950 Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (four Miss Marples, three Poirots)

  1950 A Murder Is Announced (Miss Marple)

  1951 They Came to Baghdad

  1951 The Underdog and Other Stories (Poirot)

  1952 Mrs McGinty’s Dead (Poirot)

  1952 They Do It With Mirrors (Miss Marple) (US: Murder With Mirrors)

  1953 A Pocketful of Rye (Miss Marple)

  1953 After the Funeral (Poirot) (US: Funerals Are Fatal)

  1954 Destination Unknown (US: So Many Steps to Death)

  1955 Hickory, Dickory, Dock (Poirot) (US: Hickory, Dickory, Death)

  1956 Dead Man’s Folly (Poirot)

  1957 4-50 From Paddington (Miss Marple) (US: What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw!)

  1958 Ordeal by Innocence

  1959 Cat Among the Pigeons (Poirot)

  1960 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and Other Stories (six Miss Marples, five Poirots)

  1961 Double Sin and Other Stories (four Poirots, two Miss Marples)

  1961 The Pale Horse

  1962 The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (Miss Marple)

  1963 The Clocks (Poirot)

  1964 A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple)

  1965 At Bertram’s Hotel (Miss Marple)

  1966 Third Girl (Poirot)

  1967 Endless Night

  1968 By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  1969 Hallowe’en Party (Poirot)

  1970 Passenger to Frankfurt

  1971 The Golden Ball and Other Stories

  1971 Nemesis (Miss Marple)

  1972 Elephants Can Remember (Poirot)

  1974 Postern of Fate

  1974 Poirot’s Early Cases

  1975 Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  1976 Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple)

  The Contributors

  Elizabeth Walter was an editor at Collins Publishers from 1961 and edited their Crime Club list from 1971 to 1993. A distinguished writer of stories of the supernatural, she had six volumes published, the last being In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters in 1979.

  Julian Symons was elected President of the Detection Club in succession to Agatha Christie. From 1958 to 1968 he was crime reviewer for the London Sunday Times. He wrote a history of crime writing, Bloody Murder, of criminological studies and biographies and of numerous crime novels. An early recipient of the CWA (Crime Writers’ Association) Diamond Dagger he was also made an MWA (Mystery Writers of America) Grand Master. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

  Edmund Crispin reviewed mystery novels in the London Sunday Times from 1968. Between 1944 and 1953 he wrote the nine Gervase Fen detective stories which have given him a secure place in the annals of the genre.

  Michael Gilbert was a prolific author of crime novels and short stories since 1947 and was a partner in a Lincoln’s Inn firm of solicitors. He edited the series Classics of Adventure and Detection published by Hodder & Stoughton. In 1994 he received the Lifetime Achievement CWA Diamond Dagger and was made a CBE in 1980.

  Emma Lathen wrote many highly praised mystery novels notable for their solid backgrounds of aspects of American business life, of which Murder against the Grain won the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger for 1967. Under the name R. B. Dominic (a pseudonym which remained secret until 1977) there is also a series centred on the political life of Washington, equally noted for thorough research.

  Colin Watson wrote Snobbery with Violence, a study of the sociological aspects of the crime story from the 1920s to James Bond. As a crime novelist himself, he produced a series of humorous mysteries centred on the fictional East Anglian town of Flaxborough.

  Celia Fremlin wrote sixteen novels of suspense, of which The Hours before Dawn won an Edgar Allan Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1959. A wartime interviewer for Mass Observation, the opinion sampling organization, she collaborated with the late Tom Hopkinson, its founder, in the publication Living through the Blitz.

  Dorothy B. Hughes was a mystery critic for more than a quarter of a century chiefly for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Herald Tribune. Author of a dozen suspense novels, she also wrote a biography of Erle Stanley Gardner.

  J. C. Trewin, a Cornishman and theatre historian, was a London drama critic from 1934, with the Illustrated London News from 1946. He wrote more than forty books and lectured extensively in Britain and abroad. A former literary editor of the Observer, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Past-President of the Critics’ Circle and was appointed OBE in 1981.

  Philip Jenkinson was a film critic, researcher and consultant (most recently for Hindenberg and Valentino). He was a governor of the British Film Institute and co-author of the book Celluloid Rock. He was for a long time a presenter on BBC TV’s Late Night Line-Up and Film Night.

  William Weaver reviewed crime novels for the London Financial Times and also wrote about music and theatre in Italy, where he lived from 1947. He also wrote regularly for the International Herald Tribune (Paris) and other Italian, British and American publications. His translations from the Italian (including authors such as Umberto Eco and Primo Levi) have won the Nationa
l Book Award in the USA and the John Florio Prize in Britain.

  Christianna Brand wrote a number of distinguished detective stories in the years between 1941 and 1955 and was a regular, and prize-winning, author of crime short stories. The American critic, Anthony Boucher, said of her that to find her rivals in the subtleties of the trade one must turn to ‘the greatest of the Great Names, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr.’

  H. R. F. Keating Although best known for the award-winning series of crime novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID there were two other series: those with Harriet Martens – The Hard Detective – and those with Miss Unwin, Victorian Governess – under the pseudonym Evelyn Hervey. He wrote numerous non-fiction titles about crime writing and crime writers, including Writing Crime Fiction, which is still in print. He was The Times crime-book reviewer for fifteen years from 1967. Following the awards of two CWA Golden Daggers he was the recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

  About the Authors

  H. R. F. KEATING (editor) was an awardwinning crime author renowned for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of Bombay. He was the crime fiction reviewer for The London Times for fifteen years, chairman of the Society of Authors, and president of the Detection Club. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature. Keating passed away in 2011.

  Born in Torquay in 1890, AGATHA CHRISTIE began writing mysteries during World War I and wrote over one hundred novels, plays, and short story collections. She was still writing to great acclaim until her death in 1976, and her books have now sold over one billion copies in English and another billion in over one hundred foreign languages.