All posts tagged Major Barry

Aspects of Hercule Poirot

‘Now then, you old dog. I know you Frenchmen!’
Poirot said coldly: ‘I am not a Frenchman!’
(Evil Under The Sun)

‘I prefer the life of the innocent to the conviction of the guilty.’

Poirot’s appearance

Short. Egg-shaped head.

Eyes light up green when he’s excited / on the trail.

Poirot sat up suddenly in his chair. A very faint green light glowed in his eyes. He looked extraordinarily like a sleek, well-fed cat. (The Mystery of the Blue Train, Chapter 17)

Poirot is short

Sherlock Holmes is what people expect of a master detective – tall (a shade over 6 foot), commanding and authoritative. Whereas Poirot is short – everyone comments on it, on how ‘small’ he is i.e. against the masculine stereotype.

Poirot is dapper

When necessary, Holmes is a dab hand with his fists and ready to whip his fencing sword out of his walking stick. The new breed of action heroes born during the war – John Buchan’s Richard Hannay and Sandy Arbuthnot, along with Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond – are even handier with their fists or the nearest weapon. None of them mind getting filthy dirty driving cars or flying airplanes or hiding out on the boggy moors.

Poirot couldn’t be more the opposite of this if he tried. He is not only short, but abhors physical violence and, above all, he is dapper, almost an aesthete – endlessly preening his moustaches and absurdly fussy about even a speck of dust landing on his perfectly pressed trousers.

Poirot’s age

I don’t think it’s stated anywhere, but what is stated, repeatedly, is other characters considering him over the hill, antique. In fact Christie has characters use the same slang expression, ‘gaga’, in numerous books.

After a minute Rosamund said: ‘That little man—Poirot—is he really taking an active interest!’
Kenneth Marshall said: ‘Seemed to be sitting in the Chief Constable’s pocket all right the other day.’
‘I know—but is he doing anything?’
‘How the hell should I know, Rosamund?’
She said thoughtfully: ‘He’s pretty old. Probably more or less ga ga.’
(Evil Under the Sun, Chapter 9)

Here, as in other aspects of his character, Poirot is obviously lulling the other characters and, to some extent the reader, into a false sense of complacency about him – before, of course, he solves the whole thing.

Poirot’s address

His (fictional) address is 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1.

In the long-running ITV series starring David Suchet, Poirot’s apartment block was represented by Florin Court, Charterhouse Square, London EC1.

Poirot’s egotism

‘My name is Hercule Poirot,’ he said quietly, ‘and I am probably the greatest detective in the world.’
(The Mystery of the Blue Train, chapter 17)

It amused her to see the little man plume himself like a bird, thrusting out his chest, and assuming an air of mock modesty that would have deceived no one.
(The Mystery of the Blue Train, Chapter 21)

‘You are – you are a detective, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Mademoiselle.’
‘A very well-known detective?’
‘The best detective in the world,’ said Poirot, stating it as a simple truth, no more, no less.(Appointment with Death, part 2, chapter 12)

‘Believe me – really – it would be better not to ask them. I am in good hands. Mr Seddon has been most kind. I am to have a very famous counsel.’
Poirot said:
‘He is not so famous as I am!’
Elinor Carlisle said with a touch of weariness:
‘He has a great reputation.’
‘Yes, for defending criminals. I have a great reputation – for demonstrating innocence.’
(Sad Cypress, part 2, chapter 11)

‘I want to show you, mademoiselle, that even in a small unimportant matter, I am something of a magician. There are things I know without having to be told.’
(Five Little Pigs, part 3)

Poirot’s foreignness

Because he is a foreigner in England, Poirot is outside the strict English class system. This allows him to make comic remarks about England’s appalling cuisine or the Englishman’s obsession with mindless sports. It also gives him leeway to intrude beyond the bounds of politeness which might restrain an English detective, as he explains to Roddy Welman in ‘Sad Cypress’:

Poirot said: ‘I apologize – I apologize deeply! It is so hard – to be a detective and also a pukka sahib. As it is so well expressed in your language, there are things that one does not say. But, alas, a detective is forced to say them! He must ask questions: about people’s private affairs, about their feelings.’
(Sad Cypress, part 2, chapter 6)

And it also exposes him to occasional xenophobia.

In the awesome majesty of Mrs Bishop’s black-clad presence Hercule Poirot sat humbly insignificant. The thawing of Mrs Bishop was no easy matter. For Mrs Bishop, a lady of Conservative habits and views, strongly disapproved of foreigners. And a foreigner most indubitably Hercule Poirot was. Her responses were frosty and she eyed him with disfavour and suspicion.
(Sad Cypress, part 2, chapter 4)

He is regularly described as making a ‘foreign’ gesture:

Hercule Poirot said:
‘But, then…?’
He spread out his hands in a wide, appealing foreign gesture.

Poirot is Belgian, not French

It may have been a semi-random stroke to make him Belgian – at the end of her life Christie could only remember it being something to do with the Belgian refugees who arrived in her home town of Torquay at the start of the war – but it had an interesting effect.

This is that most people think he is French and, when Poirot frostily reminds them that he is, in fact Belgian, it unnerves people. It puts them off their stroke. English people, specially in the 1920s and ’30s, had familiar received opinions about the French, but this need to correct almost everyone he speaks to, subtly gives him the advantage, subtly wrongfoots people, and indeed introduces the very notion of subtle distinctions, the noticing of which is very much Poirot’s profession.

Poirot’s method

  1. Trust no-one – everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
  2. Every witness keeps something back, no matter how trivial, sometimes unconsciously.
  3. Seek out who the crime benefits.
  4. Use order and method to establish the facts and arrange them logically.
  5. Then employ ‘the little grey cells’ to come up with ‘little ideas’ i.e. draft theories, which connect the facts.
  6. Accept no theory which doesn’t accommodate all the facts i.e. don’t jump to conclusions or hold onto pet theories which there is evidence disproving.
  7. Finally, your theory must be congruent with psychology i.e. with the characters of the people involved.

Suspect everyone

‘I am a good detective. I suspect. There is nobody and nothing that I do not suspect. I believe nothing that I am told.’ (Chapter 35)

Arrange the facts in a logical order

  • ‘Let us arrange our facts with order and precision…’
  • ‘I mean nothing,’ said Poirot. ‘I arrange the facts, that is all.’
  • ‘It is nothing,’ said Poirot modestly. ‘Order, method, being prepared for eventualities beforehand—that is all there is to it.’ (all from The Mystery of the Blue Train)

Do not suppress awkward facts

Your theory must fit all the facts. If any facts stick out, do not ignore them (as Inspector Japp notoriously does), adapt your theory.

‘It is certainly curious,’ I agreed. ‘Still, it is unimportant, and need not be taken into account.’
A groan burst from Poirot.
‘What have I always told you? Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.’
(The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Chapter 5)

And then, the theory you derive from all the facts must pass the final, most important threshold – it must comply with the psychology of the people involved, it must be psychologically plausible,

Poirot and psychology

Psychological plausibility is the last and most important criterion any theory must comply with.

‘The psychology, it is the most important fact in a case.’

In ‘Appointment with Death’ Colonel Carbury asks Poirot how he proposes to solve the murder mystery and Poirot gives a handy summary of his method:

‘By methodical sifting of the evidence, by a process of reasoning… And by a study of psychological probabilities.’ (p.127)

But Christie had a wide-ranging interest in psychology from the start, in at least 3 senses:

1. A key part of Poirot’s methodology is that, once you’ve assembled all the facts and data, the solution must not only fit the facts and evidence you’ve gathered, it must go further and have a psychological plausibility i.e. the person the evidence points towards must be psychologically consistent with a murderer.

The perfect solution must explain everything.

‘It was a solution that fitted the outer facts, but it did not satisfy the psychological requirements.’ (Chapter 28)

2. The psychological moment. In his reconstructions of murders, Poirot often points out that they occur at just the right moment, at a psychological tipping point.

3. General theories of psychological types or personalities e.g. the discussion of inferiority complexes and other complexes in ‘The ABC Murders’.

Dr Tanios was sitting in an armchair reading one of Poirot’ s books on psychology. (Chapter 23)

Or the extended discussion about human nature between doctors Gerard and King in ‘Appointment with Death’.

Poirot’s talking method

The best way to achieve this psychological accuracy, to know whether this or that action could have been performed by this or that character, is to let people talk – either in formal interview situations (which occur in so many of the novels soon after the murder) or in the numerous informal conversations Poirot happens to / manages to have with all the key characters. Let people talk long enough and sooner or later they will reveal themselves!

‘To investigate a crime it is only necessary to let the guilty party or parties talk.’ (Appointment with Death p.217)

Explained at greater length in Death in the Clouds:

‘What a horrible, tricky sort of person you are, M. Poirot,’ said Jane, rising. ‘I shall never know why you are saying things.’
‘That is quite simple. I want to find out things.’
‘I suppose you’ve got very clever ways of finding out things?’
‘There is only one really simple way.’
‘What is that?’
‘To let people tell you.’
Jane laughed.
‘Suppose they don’t want to?’
‘Everyone likes talking about themselves.’
‘I suppose they do,’ admitted Jane.
‘That is how many a quack makes a fortune. He encourages patients to come and sit and tell him things. How they fell out of the perambulator when they were two, and how their mother ate a pear and the juice fell on her orange dress, and how when they were one and a half they pulled their father’s beard; and then he tells them that now they will not suffer from the insomnia any longer, and he takes two guineas; and they go away, having enjoyed themselves – oh, so much – and perhaps they do sleep.’
‘How ridiculous,’ said Jane.
‘No, it is not so ridiculous as you think. It is based on a fundamental need of human nature – the need to talk – to reveal oneself.’
(Death in the Clouds, Chapter 16)

Poirot’s Eureka moment

Towards the end of every story, there’s a Eureka moment when the penny drops, and when Poirot always describes himself as a fool or imbecile for not seeing it sooner.

Then he uttered a grunt. ‘Imbecile that I am! Of course!’ (Dumb Witness, Chapter 23)

Poirot’s big reveal

‘You are probably wondering why I have gathered you all here this evening…

In the course of my association with Poirot I had assisted at many such a scene. A little company of people, all outwardly composed with well-bred masks for faces. And I had seen Poirot strip the mask from one face and show it for what it was – the face of a killer!
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 29)

Actually this classic scene doesn’t happen quite as often as legend suggests, only about 4 or 5 times in the 20 or so novels I’ve read.

Poirot likes to make things difficult

Early on in the books Inspector Japp accuses Poirot of deliberately making everything he’s involved with more difficult than it need be, and thereafter the phrase and accusation recur regularly as, for example, in this little exchange between Poirot and an exasperated Jane Olivera in ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’.

‘Is she dead?’
‘I have not said so.’
‘She’s alive, then?’
‘I have not said that either.’
Jane looked at him with irritation. She exclaimed:
‘Well, she’s got to be one or the other, hasn’t she?’
‘Actually, it’s not quite so simple.’
‘I believe you just like making things difficult!’
‘It has been said of me,’ admitted Hercule Poirot.

Poirot’s OCD

I knew about obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) but it was only from reading around Poirot that I discovered the existence of symmetry OCD. According to the internet:

Symmetry OCD is a subtype of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) where individuals experience intense anxiety or distress related to the alignment, arrangement, or balance of objects and even their own actions. This can manifest as a need for things to be perfectly symmetrical, aligned, or ‘just right’, leading to repetitive behaviours like arranging, ordering, or touching items to achieve this perceived perfection.

Two points. 1) Obviously Poirot’s tendency to rearrange trivial household objects, on a mantelpiece or table top, is intended as an external corollary of his internal need to arrange the facts of a case with method and order and logic. All part of the same tendency. Everything in a case must be arranged just so:

‘But one does not like things that one cannot explain.’ (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, p.217)

And again, in ‘Evil Under The Sun’:

‘My orderly mind, that is vexed by trifles!’ (Chapter 8)

But 2) the noteworthy thing about Poirot’s OCD is actually, I think, how restrained Christie is about it. In most of the novels there is only one minor momentary instance of Poirot rearranging things: blink and you’d miss it – and in some of the novels it’s not even mentioned at all. I.e. it’s done with surprising subtlety. Just one mention per book is enough to make the point.

Poirot took a little time to speak. Methodically he arranged an ash-tray or two and made a little heap of used matches. (Appointment with Death, p.127)

It’s in ‘Appointment with Death’ that we learn that Poirot insists on cleaning his own shoes. He takes everywhere his own little shoe-cleaning outfit and duster (AWD, p.150). Sweet.

Poirot’s house of cards

In ‘Peril at End House’ Poirot sends Hastings to buy a pack of cards so that he can sit quietly making houses of cards with them. Helps him think. Again, like the OCD, this is underplayed rather than over-used. In fact it only happens once in the 20 or so novels I’ve read.

That night, when I came into the sitting-room about ten o’clock, I found Poirot carefully building card houses – and I remembered! It was an old trick of his – soothing his nerves. He smiled at me.
‘Yes – you remember. One needs the precision. One card on another – so – in exactly the right place and that supports the weight of the card on top and so on, up.’
(‘Peril at End House’, Chapter 17)

Poirot smokes tiny cigarettes

Hercule Poirot, with care and precision, lighted a very tiny cigarette.
(Sad Cypress, part 2, Chapter 1)

Poirot… extracted his cigarette case and lit one of those tiny cigarettes which it was his affection to smoke.
(Evil Under The Sun, Chapter 2)

The bourgeois detective

Jane Olivera is a feisty young American woman who takes against Poirot from the start. But she is the only one who insults him in quite this way:

She paused, then, her agreeable, husky voice deepening, she said venomously: ‘I loathe the sight of you – you bloody little bourgeois detective!’
She swept away from him in a whirl of expensive model drapery. Hercule Poirot remained, his eyes very wide open, his eyebrows raised and his hand thoughtfully caressing his moustaches.
The epithet bourgeois was, he admitted, well applied to him. His outlook on life was essentially bourgeois, and always had been, but the employment of it as an epithet of contempt by the exquisitely turned out Jane Olivera gave him, as he expressed it to himself, furiously to think…
(One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, p.156)

Poirot’s sidekicks

Captain Hastings

Poirot is associated, not least because of the ITV dramatisations, with well-meaning but slow and dim sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings. Hastings appears in Christie’s very first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles – in fact he narrates it – before going on to appear in seven further novels:

  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
  • The Murder on the Links (1923)
  • The Big Four (1927)
  • Peril at End House (1932)
  • Lord Edgware Dies (1933)
  • The A.B.C. Murders (1936)
  • Dumb Witness (1937)

And there his presence ends until the final Poirot novel, Curtain which, although written in the early 1940s, wasn’t published until 1975.

Hastings obviously plays the role of the Dr Watson figure, the confidant to the great detective, allowing him to ponder the evidence and work through theories out loud, as it were, so that the reader can overhear every stage of the great man’s developing theory, which is half the fun of a detective novel. No sidekick, everything would be locked up in the great man’s mind.

In addition, Hastings is a comic character because he is consistently wrong, slow on the uptake and quick to draw completely the wrong conclusions. Somewhere Poirot explicitly states that he loves having Hastings around because whenever he makes a suggestion or theory, Poirot can be confident it’s wrong and remove it from his list.

But even as I read  the novels through, I myself became bored with Hastings. His dimness wears thin, as does his rather creepy habit of falling in love with any nubile young woman involved in the plot. I can see why Christie eventually dropped him altogether. There are 33 Poirot novels and Hastings appears in just eight.

Colonel Race

Christie’s maturing taste and style are reflected by the appearance of Colonel Race to play the sidekick role. As an Army officer and secret service agent, Race is a much more intelligent and reliable confidant, much more at Poirot’s own level of keen intelligence and insight. He plays a leading role in four novels:

  • The Man in the Brown Suit (1924)
  • Cards on the Table (1936)
  • Death on the Nile (1937)
  • Sparkling Cyanide (1945)

as well as being mentioned in Appointment with Death (1938).

So Poirot has sidekicks to confide in and share the sleuthing with in about 12 of the novels, meaning he is much more of a solo operator in the other 20 or so.

Poirot’s one woman

Sherlock Holmes admired just one woman, the one woman who had outwitted him, Irene Adler, who he ever afterwards refers to as ‘the Woman’.

Well, in another straight steal from Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie gives her world famous detective One Woman who he from time to time remembers with a wistful sigh. In the middle of ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’, Poirot goes for a walk through Regents Park, noting the nursemaids and courting couples, young people everywhere:

They were chic, these little London girls. They wore their tawdry clothes with an air. Their figures, however, he considered lamentably deficient. Where were the rich curves, the voluptuous lines that had formerly delighted the eye of an admirer?

He, Hercule Poirot, remembered women… One woman, in particular – what a sumptuous creature – Bird of Paradise – a Venus… What woman was there amongst these pretty chits nowadays, who could hold a candle to Countess Vera Rossakoff? A genuine Russian aristocrat, an aristocrat to her fingertips! And also, he remembered, a most accomplished thief… One of those natural geniuses…

With a sigh, Poirot wrenched his thoughts away from the flamboyant creature of his dreams… (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, p.186)

Poirot’s friends in high places

In ‘One, Two, Buckle My Shoe’, we learn that Poirot has friends in impressively high places – exactly like Sherlock Holmes he is said to have saved individual ministers’ bacon or even the entire government.

Poirot called at Scotland Yard and asked for Japp. When he was taken up to the Chief Inspector’s room: ‘I want to see Carter,’ said Hercule Poirot. Japp shot him a quick, sideways glance. He said:
‘What’s the big idea?’
‘You are unwilling?’
Japp shrugged his shoulders. He said: ‘Oh, I shan’t make objections. No good if I did. Who’s the Home Secretary’s little pet? You are. Who’s got half the Cabinet in his pocket? You have. Hushing up their scandals for them.’
Poirot’s mind flew for a moment to that case that he had named the Case of the Augean Stables. He murmured, not without complacence: ‘It was ingenious, yes? You must admit it.’
(One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, p.173)

Sentiments echoed by the CID officer in charge of the Elinor Welman case in ‘Sad Cypress’:

Inspector Marsden smiled indulgently. He said:
‘Got the present Home Secretary in your pocket, haven’t you?’
(Sad Cypress, part 2, chapter 8)

Poirot gets seasick

Miss Brewster, noting the glance, said kindly: ‘You’d soon get that off, M. Poirot, if you took a rowing‐boat out every day.’
‘Merci, Mademoiselle. I detest boats!’
‘You mean small boats?’
‘Boats of all sizes!’ He closed his eyes and shuddered. ‘The movement of the sea, it is not pleasant.’
‘Bless the man, the sea is as calm as a mill pond today.’
Poirot replied with conviction: ‘There is no such thing as a really calm sea. Always, always, there is motion.’
(Evil Under The Sun, Chapter 1)

Poirot’s pitilessness

At the end of ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, having established the identities of the murderers, Poirot famously (well, it’s famous if you know about it) lets them off, letting the authorities believe a false version of events. This is because the murdered man turns out to himself have been a disgusting child murderer and all the murderers had been affected by his terrible crime.

No such luck, though, for the Boynton family in ‘Appointment with Death’. When the evil matriarch, Mrs Boynton, is bumped off suspicion falls on all of them. It takes an outsider, Nadine, married to the (grown-up) son, to beg Poirot to stop his investigations and let the family, which has suffered so much, get on with their lives. But Poirot says no.

Nadine said passionately: ‘I have heard, M. Poirot, that once, in that affair of the Orient Express, you accepted an official verdict of what had happened?’
Poirot looked at her curiously. ‘I wonder who told you that.’
‘Is it true?’
He said slowly: ‘That case was… different.’
‘No. No, it was not different! The man who was killed was evil,’ her voice dropped, ‘as she was…’
Poirot said: ‘The moral character of the victim has nothing to do with it! A human being who has exercised the right of private judgment and taken the life of another human being is not safe to exist amongst the community. I tell you that! I, Hercule Poirot!’
‘How hard you are!’
‘Madame, in some ways I am adamant. I will not condone murder! That is the final word of Hercule Poirot.’
(Book 2, chapter 7)

Same thing happens in ‘Sad Cypress’. Dr Lord argues that even if the woman he loves, Elinor Welman, did murder Mary Gerrard, it was out of jealousy founded on love for the man Mary had won from her (Roddy). Love does funny things to people and so, on that basis, he wants Poirot to investigate the case and help get her off even if she did it. He says:

‘Supposing she was driven desperate? Love’s a desperate and twisting business. It can turn a worm into a fine fellow—and it can bring a decent, straight man down to the dregs! Suppose she did do it. Haven’t you got any pity?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘I do not approve of murder.’
(Sad Cypress, part 2, chapter 1)

Poirot’s favourite foods

Poirot has a very sweet tooth. He always drinks chocolate for breakfast, a revolting habit according to Captain Hastings in ‘Dumb Witness’. And again:

George entered the room with his usual noiseless tread. He set down on a little table a steaming pot of chocolate and some sugar biscuits.
(One, Two, Buckle My Shoe)

But in ‘Evil Under The Sun’:

Hercule Poirot breakfasted in his room as usual off coffee and rolls.

Well, Christie isn’t on oath to be consistent.

In ‘Lord Edgware Dies’ we learn that Poirot’s favourite dessert is a Baba au Rhum i.e. rum baba.

Poirot’s favourite drink is the non-alcoholic sirop de cassis, ‘syrup of the blackcurrants’ as he puts it, or blackcurrant cordial, not unlike the English cordial, Ribena. In ‘Death on the Nile’ he drinks ‘a double orangeade full of sugar’. No wonder he’s so tubby.

I thought this sweet tooth was going to be ubiquitous but in xxx he also drinks wine and, being Francophone, it is hinted that he is a connoisseur, though this is nowhere dwelled on.

Poirot on English cuisine

‘The coffee in this country is very bad anyway—’ said Poirot.
‘I’ll say it is,’ agreed Mr Raikes with fervour.
‘But if you allow it to get cold it is practically undrinkable.’
(One, Two, Buckle My Shoe)

Like any sensible person, he dislikes tea, or at least the way the English make it, milky and sweet.

Nurse Hopkins was hospitable with the teapot, and a minute later Poirot was regarding with some dismay a cup of inky beverage.
‘Just made—nice and strong!’ said Nurse Hopkins.
Poirot stirred his tea cautiously and took one heroic sip.
(Sad Cypress, part 2, chapter 13)

Poirot’s watch

In her biography of Christie, Laura Thompson says she wasn’t a very humorous woman. Maybe, but her books are. Her books are full of delightful little comic touches. That’s why I read them.

Poirot glanced at his watch, a large grotesque turnip of a watch.
‘Family heirloom?’ enquired Carbury, interestedly.
‘But yes indeed, it belonged to my grandfather.’
‘Thought it might have done.’
(Appointment with Death, Chapter 15)

Poirot likes shoes and feet

‘I came out from my séance at the dentist’s and as I stood on the steps of 58 Queen Charlotte Street, a taxi stopped outside, the door opened and a woman’s foot prepared to descend. I am a man who notices a woman’s foot and ankle. It was a well-shaped foot, with a good ankle and an expensive stocking, but I did not like the shoe…’
(One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, p.215)

Later, in Evil Under The Sun, sitting with oldsters on the terrace of a hotel looking down on rows of half-naked sunbathers:

Major Barry said appreciatively: ‘Good‐looking fillies, some of ’em. Bit on the thin side, perhaps.’
Poirot cried: ‘Yes, but what appeal is there? What mystery? I, I am old, of the old school. When I was young, one saw barely the ankle. The glimpse of a foamy petticoat, how alluring! The gentle swelling of the calf – a knee – a beribboned garter –’
‘Naughty, naughty!’ said Major Barry hoarsely.
(Evil under the Sun, Chapter 1)

Poirotisms

I’ve mentioned how Poirot’s foreignness is raised a number of times. It can also be used for pure comic purposes, as when Christie has Poirot mangle an English proverb or common phrase, as he does at least once in every story. I’ve christened these comic malapropisms ‘Poirotisms’:

‘For the same reason, when she sets out the following day to get rid of the golf clubs, she continues to use the attaché-case as a – what is it – kippered herring?’
‘Red herring,’ Japp said.
(Murder in the Mews, Chapter 10)

Poirot held up a hand. ‘I do what you call explore all the avenues.’
(The Incredible Theft, Chapter 4)

‘Ah, yes, it is what you call the old gasp – no, pardon, the old wheeze, that – to come back for a book. It is often useful!’
(The Incredible Theft, Chapter 4)

‘One has, sometimes, a feeling. Faintly, I seem to smell the fish.’
(Dead Man’s Mirror, Chapter 1)

‘On the contrary, my friend, ‘any old lie,’ as you put it, would not do. Not with a lawyer. We should be – how do you say it? – thrown out with the flea upon the ear.’
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 13)

‘The only thing is – I am afraid.’
‘Afraid? Of what?’
He said gravely: ‘Of disturbing the dogs that sleep. That is one of your proverbs, is it not?’
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 18)

‘It is true that I am pig-headed – that is your expression, I think? Yes, definitely I have the head of the pig,’ said my friend meditatively.
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 21)

Poirot patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘It was the narrow squeak – yes?’
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 26)

‘Bien,’ said Poirot, rising with the check in his hand. ‘We have done our part. Now it is on the knees of the gods.’
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 26)

‘The hotel’s half empty, and everyone’s about a hundred—’
She stopped—biting her lip. Hercule Poirot’s eyes twinkled.
‘It is true, yes, I have one leg in the grave.’
(Death on the Nile, Chapter 2)

Simon said boyishly: ‘You must tell us something about your cases on board the Karnak.’
‘No, no; that would be to talk—what do you call it?—the shop.’
(Death on the Nile, Chapter 4)

‘Up to a point it is all the clear sailing.’
(Death on the Nile, Chapter 16)

Poirot nodded. ‘But for the moment,’ he said, and smiled, ‘we handle him with the gloves of kid, is it not so?’
(Death on the Nile, Chapter 18)

‘I am talking about facts, Mademoiselle—plain ugly facts. Let us call the spade the spade.’
(Death on the Nile, Chapter 19)

Poirot said with a sigh: ‘Alas, the proverb is true. When you are courting, two is company, is it not, three is none?’
(One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, p.188)

Poirot is droll

‘Let us say that I shall have definite proof in my hands tomorrow.’ Dr Donaldson’ s eyebrows rose in a slightly ironical fashion.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow! Sometimes, M. Poirot, tomorrow is a long way off.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Poirot, ‘I always find that it succeeds today with monotonous regularity.’
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 27)

Poirot’s manservant

George, Poirot’s immaculate and extremely English manservant, opened the door.
(Dumb Witness, Chapter 23)

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by Simon on September 26, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Biography, Detective stories, Literary criticism
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Posted by Simon on September 26, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/09/26/aspects-of-poirot/

Evil Under The Sun by Agatha Christie (1941)

‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget, Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun.’
(Poirot in sententious mode)

Rosamund said suddenly: ‘Sometimes—things seem unreal. I can’t believe, this minute, that it ever happened…’
(One or other character says this in every novel)

‘I do think the people who make puzzles are kind of mean. They just go out of their way to deceive you.’
(The American Mrs Gardener is referring to jigsaw puzzles but clearly, in a Christie joke, this can be applied to detective novels)

‘Motive and opportunity.’
(Chief Constable Weston stating the fundamental goals of a murder enquiry, Chapter 6)

Plot summary

The Jolly Roger hotel

The Jolly Roger hotel is located on Leathercombe Island just off the Devon coast. With the rise of seaside holidays in the 1920s it has become very popular but likes to think of itself as an exclusive sort of place, certainly in the view of its owner Mrs Castle, with her ‘almost offensively refined manner of speech’. The hotel’s pretentious aspirations are helped by the way it can only be reached from the mainland via a causeway which is underwater at high tide.

Improbably enough, world famous detective Hercule Poirot is taking a summer holiday there (instead, as a character points out, at the more believable Riviera) and finds himself – surprise, surprise – thrown into the middle of a murder mystery!

Hotel guests

The setup is pretty straightforward. The first couple of chapters introduce us to the dozen or so guests at the hotel, superficially a heterogeneous lot although you quickly recognise stock Christie types: the gabby Mrs Gardener and her monosyllabic husband; the tough no-nonsense middle-aged woman (a lesbian?) Miss Brewster; an old Major who bores on about his time in India; a fiercer-than-usual vicar who disapproves of immorality etc.

The love triangle

But central to the story is an eternal triangle: bluff handsome Kenneth Marshall, in his 40s, recently married former stage star Arlena Stuart (‘She appeared in Revue and musical shows’), a stunningly glamorous flirt, in her 30s. Also staying at the hotel are Patrick Redfern, lean and bronzed, and his new wife, Christine Redfern, pale and ineffectual. From the moment the Marshalls arrive, Patrick is bewitched by Arlena, follows her around the beach like a puppy and more or less ignores his wife. All the other guests, like the chorus of an ancient play, comment on this central action and how it will end badly, building up the tension (just like in a Greek play).

The murder

And it does end badly because one sunny day Arlena is discovered dead, brutally strangled, at Pixy Cove, a rarely-visited cove round the headland from the main hotel beach. Poirot himself helped her push off the little ‘float’ she took and paddled round the headland. She made a point of asking Poirot not to tell anyone he’d seen her, as if she was heading for a secret assignation.

Poirot then observed Patrick come down to the beach and pace up and down as if waiting to meet her, before chunky Miss Brewster arrived and Patrick persuaded her to take a rowboat and row round to the cove, which is where they both discovered Arlena’s body. They initially thought she was lying calmly sunbathing before Patrick went closer and realised she was dead, at which point he panic-strickenly told Miss Brewster to row back to the hotel and call the police.

Chief suspects

So: who killed Arlena Stuart? The obvious suspects are:

1) her husband, Ken, goaded beyond endurance by her very public infidelity. Moreover, in his police interview we learn that two years ago Arlena was left the hefty sum of £50,000 by an ‘admirer’, Sir Robert Erskine. As she appears to have died without a will, this sum will go directly to her husband, Ken. There’s your old-fashioned motive – material gain – right there.

Except that he has an alibi: he was in his bedroom at the precise time of the murder (the police doctor estimates time of death between 10.45 and 11.45) writing letters on his typewriter. Hotel staff heard and saw him. And at noon he sallied out to play a game of mixed doubles tennis with Mrs Redfern, Miss Darnley and Mr Gardener.

2) Christine Redfern, goaded by her husband’s very public infidelity – but her alibi is that she was painting at Gull Cove in the company of young Linda Marshall, until she returned to the hotel to take part in the mixed double tennis starting at noon.

3) I’ve just mentioned Linda, Ken’s 16-year-old daughter by an earlier marriage. Christie shows her in half a dozen scenes in her bedroom being a self-conscious adolescent and utterly hating Arlena for taking her Daddy away from her and making him behave so unnaturally.

4) Patrick Redfern had possibly moved from the infatuation stage to realising he was being played with by Arlena, and coming to hate her and the damage it was doing his marriage. But his alibi is that he was in plain sight on the main beach for some time before persuading Miss Brewster to row a dinghy round to Pixy Cove where they both discovered the body.

5) Is it the Reverend Lane who, at every appearance, is made to look more like a religious fanatic, quick to describe Arlena as the embodiment of Evil, ‘a woman such as Jezebel and Aholibah’ etc?

And in any case, surely these are too obvious. Might not one of the hotel guests have some secret reason for wanting to kill Arlena? Or might the murderer come from quite outside the closed circle of hotel guests – Arlena had, after all, left a string of exploited embittered men across the Home Counties. Not to mention jealous (female) rivals in the bitchy world of West End theatre. Or could the murder result from complex historical events which rope in people from the other side of the planet, as in the preposterous denouement of ‘Sad Cypress’? Frankly anything is possible.

So the usual procedure clunks into operation: the triumvirate of Poirot, the police inspector leading the investigation, Inspector Colgate, and the country’s Chief Constable, Colonel Weston, set up shop in a hotel room and interview all the guests one by one, establishing their movements on the morning of the murder plus wider relationships and opinions of the murdered woman. This takes up about a quarter of the novel and is then followed, just as predictably, by Poirot’s own personal conversations and probing of the suspects, at random moments, accompanied by a trickle of further revelations which keep moving the goalposts and introducing no end of red herrings.

Although all the details are novel, the overall shape is incredibly formulaic, one more reason why readers then and now find the novels so homely and reassuring.

Cast

  • Mrs Gardener – American, can’t stop talking, and knitting
  • Odell C. Gardener – American, hardly says anything except to comment on how ‘very sensitive’ his wife is
  • Miss Emily Brewster – ‘a tough athletic woman with grizzled hair and a pleasant weather‐beaten face’; ‘a voice like a man’s. She is gruff and what you call hearty’
  • Major Barry – fatal tendency to embark on long Indian stories
  • Mr Lane – ‘a tall vigorous clergyman of fifty odd. His face was tanned and his dark grey flannel trousers were holidayfied and disreputable’ – unlike the amiable vague vicars of previous novels, Lane is a born-again fanatic, obsessed with Satan, Sin and Evil, and quick to describe Arlena as an embodiment of Evil
  • Patrick Redfern – ‘a good specimen of humanity. Lean, bronzed with broad shoulders and narrow thighs, there was about him a kind of infectious enjoyment and gaiety—a native simplicity that endeared him to all women and most men’
  • Mrs Christine Redfern – ‘an ash blonde and her skin was of that dead fairness that goes with that colouring. Her legs and arms were very white’, ‘She had a fair serious face, pretty in a negative way and small dainty hands and feet’
  • Arlena Stuart – real name Helen Stuart, stage name Arlena Stuart – ‘tall and slender. She wore a simple backless white bathing dress and every inch of her exposed body was tanned a beautiful even shade of bronze. She was as perfect as a statue. Her hair was a rich flaming auburn curling richly and intimately into her neck. Her face had that slight hardness which is seen when thirty years have come and gone, but the whole effect of her was one of youth—of superb and triumphant vitality. There was a Chinese immobility about her face, and an upward slant of the dark blue eyes. On her head she wore a fantastic Chinese hat of jade green cardboard’ – ‘the eternal Circe’
  • Kenneth Marshall – man of about forty, fair‐haired and sun‐tanned. He had a quiet pleasant face and was sitting on the beach smoking a pipe and reading The Times‘
  • Linda Marshall – his self-conscious 16-year-old daughter
  • Rosamund Darnley – business name is Rose Mond Ltd, a celebrated dressmaker; Poirot ‘admired Rosamund Darnley as much as any woman he had ever met. He liked her distinction, the graceful lines of her figure, the alert proud carriage of her head. He liked the neat sleek waves of her dark hair and the ironic quality of her smile’ – old family friend of Kenneth Marshall, their families lived next to each other
  • Mr Horace Blatt – ‘a large man with a red face and a fringe of reddish hair round a shining bald spot’, ‘It was Mr Blatt’s apparent ambition to be the life and soul of any place he happened to be in’ – ‘a rich man. He talks a good deal—about Mr Blatt. He wants to be everybody’s friend’
  • the Mastermans and the Cowans, two families with young people
  • Mrs Castle – owner and proprietress of the Jolly Roger Hotel, ‘a woman of forty odd with a large bust, rather violent henna red hair, and an almost offensively refined manner of speech’
  • George the handyman – ‘George attends to the bathing beach. He sees to the costumes and the floats. William is the gardener. He keeps the paths and marks the tennis courts and all that’
  • Henry in the bar
  • the cook and two under her
  • Albert, the Maitre d’, with three staff
  • Gladys Narracott – hotel chambermaid, ‘a woman of thirty, brisk, efficient and intelligent’

Cops

  • Inspector Colgate
  • Dr Neasden – police surgeon
  • Chief Constable Colonel Weston
  • Chief Inspector Ridgeway – ‘who’s in charge of the dope business, and he was no end keen’

The importance of the character of the murderee

Hercule Poirot answered before either of the others could speak. He said: ‘You do not comprehend, Captain Marshall. There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of a person Arlena Marshall was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that springs the necessity of our questions.’

Poirot’s method

Every novel contains at least some explanation of Poirot’s method. Christie must have got bored having to ring the changes on such an essentially limited subject. Here she does it via the device of having Poirot get involved with garrulous old Mrs Gardener doing a jigsaw. Poirot helps her by placing a white piece into the black cat. Mrs Gardener objects that it’s a black cat but Poirot points out that it certainly is, except for the tip of its tail, which is white. Which leads on to Mrs G asking:

‘about detecting, I would so like to know your methods—you know, I’d feel privileged if you’d just explain it to me.’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘It is a little like your puzzle, Madame. One assembles the pieces. It is like a mosaic—many colours and patterns—and every strange‐shaped little piece must be fitted into its own place.’
‘Now isn’t that interesting? Why, I’m sure you explain it just too beautifully.’
Poirot went on: ‘And sometimes it is like that piece of your puzzle just now. One arranges very methodically the pieces of the puzzle—one sorts the colours—and then perhaps a piece of one colour that should fit in with—say, the fur rug, fits in instead in a black cat’s tail.’

Heroin

Two-thirds of the way through an enormous red herring is introduced into the story when a consignment of heroin is found stashed in a cave on the cove where Arlena was killed. For a while the police run with the theory that Arlena stumbled across a drug smuggling gang and was bumped off or, even more far-fetched, that she was part of a drug smuggling gang. Christie has Inspector Colgate explain to his boss that he’s been in touch with Scotland Yard about it, where he:

‘saw Chief Inspector Ridgeway who’s in charge of the dope business, and he was no end keen. Seems there’s been a good bit of heroin coming in lately. They’re on to the small distributors, and they know more or less who’s running it the other end, but it’s the way it’s coming into the country that’s baffled them so far.’ (Chapter 11)

As usual, what interest me is not very much the plot (after 20 or so pages of being a serious theory about the murder, the whole dope angle is quietly dropped) it’s the social history of the thing: i.e. that heroin smuggling (and therefore, illegal consumption) was a problem for the police as long ago as the 1930s.

Fawlty Towers

As I keep saying, I’m not that interested in the ‘murders’ or the mysteries surrounding them in Christie’s novels, though I can see that they presented, and still present, entertaining crossword or Sudoku-style puzzles for readers who like that sort of thing.

I read them more for the comedy, which is present throughout at multiple levels, from the blatant comedy of broad comic characters down to Poirot’s sly looks and half-smiles. Even at the most serious moments, Christie gives him his green cat’s eyes or has him rearrange the objects on a mantelpiece or light one of his tiny, tiny cigarettes – all which bring a smile to the lips of the seasoned reader.

The novels themselves are packed with characters who feel so stock and stereotyped they continually verge on caricature.

And they are comedies in the technical sense that, although one or two people die, the story is rounded off with complete closure, all the loose ends are tied up, and the reader is left with a deep smile of reassurance on their face.

Of the broad character / caricature type is the old Major in the story, Major Barry, who at the drop of a hat is liable to embark on yet another of his long boring stories about his time in India. Here’s an example which demonstrates what fun Christie had mimicking the voice of such a pompous old Army bore:

‘Matter of fact this business reminds me of a case in Simla. Fellow called Robinson, or was it Falconer? Anyway he was in the East Wilts, or was it the North Surreys? Can’t remember now, and anyway it doesn’t matter. Quiet chap, you know, great reader—mild as milk you’d have said. Went for his wife one evening in their bungalow. Got her by the throat. She’d been carryin’ on with some feller or other and he’d got wise to it. By Jove, he nearly did for her! It was touch and go. Surprised us all! Didn’t think he had it in him.’
(Chapter 7)

Suddenly I realised this is the Major from Fawlty Towers. Fawlty Towers is set in a hotel in Torquay (where Agatha was born and raised) and features a bunch of recurring characters very much like the characters you meet in classic Christie (the nagging wife, the moustachio-ed foreigner, the old Major, the temperamental chef, the two nice old spinster ladies, the sexy maid, the handsome guest, and so on).

Bookishness

There are none of the usual references by one or other character to the whole thing resembling a detective novel, but there is the statutory comparison with Sherlock Holmes which occurs in nearly but not quite all of Christie’s novels. In fact there are two references. The first comes from the blabbermouth Horace Blatt:

‘Hullo, Poirot, didn’t see you at first. So you’re in on this? Oh well, I suppose you would be. Sherlock Holmes v. the local police, is that it? Ha, ha! Lestrade – all that stuff. I’ll enjoy seeing you do a bit of fancy sleuthing.’ (Chapter 9)

Then Mrs Darnley.

‘Ha!’ said Poirot. ‘So nobody took a bath. That is extremely interesting.’
‘But why should anyone take a bath?’
Hercule Poirot said: ‘Why, indeed?’
Rosamund said with some exasperation: ‘I suppose this is the Sherlock Holmes touch!’
Hercule Poirot smiled.

Vocab

Not very systematically, I’m interested in 1920s and 1930s slang. In this one, I was interested in the recurrence of the word ‘stunt’

‘Let’s have ’em all in and get it over as soon as possible. Never know, might learn something. About the blackmailing stunt if about nothing else.’

Inspector Colgate whistled. He said: ‘Now we’re getting places, all right! Depend upon it, this dope stunt is at the bottom of the whole business.’

Weston said: ‘If the Marshall woman’s death is the result of her getting mixed up, innocently or otherwise, with the dope‐running stunt, then we’d better hand the whole thing over to Scotland Yard.’

And the verb ‘wash out’ meaning something like ‘excluded’, ‘removed from the list’ (of suspects):

Inspector Colgate said gloomily: ‘Then that washes her out.’

Inspector Colgate said: ‘I think, sir, that we can wash out the first two entries.’

‘Miss Darnley saw him at twenty minutes past, and the woman was dead at a quarter to twelve. He says he spent that hour typing in his room, and it seems quite clear that he was typing in his room. That washes Captain Marshall right out.’

‘Nothing to fit in with the blackmail theory?’
‘No, sir, I think we can wash him out as far as that’s concerned.’

‘But when it came down to brass tacks the husband was washed right out of the picture. The body was discovered by one of these women hikers—hefty young women in shorts. She was an absolutely competent and reliable witness—games mistress at a school in Lancashire.’

Credit

‘Evil Under The Sun’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in June 1941.

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by Simon on September 3, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Detective stories, Novel
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Posted by Simon on September 3, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/09/03/evil-under-the-sun-agatha-christie/