‘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
- Trust no-one – everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
- Every witness keeps something back, no matter how trivial, sometimes unconsciously.
- Seek out who the crime benefits.
- Use order and method to establish the facts and arrange them logically.
- Then employ ‘the little grey cells’ to come up with ‘little ideas’ i.e. draft theories, which connect the facts.
- 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.
- 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)
Books & Boots 