Poirot Project: Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan (review)

This post is part of my 2016-19 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

Okay, so once again I’ve had a bit of a gap between posts, and it’s taken me a while to get to this one. However, I’m planning on writing a few posts in quick succession now. I don’t think I’m going to get to Curtain by Christmas, but I think I might actually get to Dumb Witness!

The eighth (and final) episode of the fifth series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 7th March 1993. This was to be the last hour-long episode, and so the last of the short stories to get the individual treatment. It’s a curiously anti-climactic finale for the original format of the series, as it’s not a particularly notable episode (or, indeed, a particularly notable short story). If the programme-makers had known that it would be the last of the short format episodes, perhaps they might have changed the running order of the series – who knows?

There are a couple of things worth mentioning before I start the post properly. Firstly, although this is the last of the short-format episodes, there are still a number of Christie’s short stories that have yet to be adapted. The programme-makers would return to those stories in the end – and I’ll talk about how this works at a later date – but, for now, they are unadapted and (as would become apparent) shelved indefinitely.

The second thing to mention about this episode is that, not only does it mark a turning-point in the series (no more hour-long episodes), it’s also a bit of a watershed moment in my own personal relationship with the ITV series and with Christie’s fiction. As will become clear in the next post, some big stuff changed in my life between the airing of ‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ and the next episode of the series. In some ways, it’s the coincidence of timing that has made me feel a very strong personal connection to the series. I was fourteen when ‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ was first broadcast, and so just coming to the end of my childhood. I’ll write more about that when I tackle the next episode though (and I’ll warn you now, it’ll be a bit sad).

For now…

‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ was based on Christie’s short story of almost the same name (aka ‘The Curious Disappearance of the Opalsen Pearls’), which was first published in The Sketch in March 1993. It isn’t the most memorable (or the longest) story, but it has a nice bit of locked room action for fans of impossible crimes.

Poirot and Hastings are off to the seaside! Apropos of absolutely nothing, Hastings announces that a change of air would do Poirot good, and that he’d like to take him off for a weekend in Brighton. This largesse on Hastings’s part is the result of him coming into a bit of money from ‘a very good thing’ – though whether this is an investment or a gamble is left up to our imagination. He tells Poirot that he has ‘money to burn’ and, instead of offering to pay his mate back for the rent-free accommodation he’s been mooching, he splashes out on a trip to the Grand Metropolitan. Poirot is touched by his friend’s generosity, but somehow manages to combine this with a dig at his intelligence: ‘the good heart, it is in the end worth all the little grey cells’.

Anyway, off they go to the seaside together, and wouldn’t you know it? no sooner are they there than they run into a mystery. Almost the second they arrive at the hotel, they run into Mrs Opalsen, a woman that Hastings knows ‘slightly’ due to the fact that her husband is a ‘rich stockbroker’ and, for the purposes of this story, Hastings hangs around with rich stockbrokers in his spare time.

Mrs Opalsen loves jewellery, and so Poirot regales her with tales of jewel thefts he has known. She then tells him that she has ‘one of the finest necklaces in the world’ that she’d love to show him. Mrs Opalsen runs off to fetch the pearls, but…

(If you can’t guess what happens next, I’m not sure why you’re even reading Agatha Christie tbh.)

So, while the Opalsens were at dinner, they left their valuable pearl necklace locked in a jewellery box in their hotel room. The box was left in a drawer (not locked), but their maid Célestine was in the bedroom the entire time. She was joined at one point by the chambermaid, and so the only conceivable suspicion falls on either the lady’s maid or the chambermaid. The former seems more likely, as the chambermaid was only left alone in the room twice – for less than 20 seconds each time – during the course of the evening. She wouldn’t have had time to open the drawer, retrieve the jewellery box, unlock the box with a duplicate key (which she would have had to somehow source prior to the theft), remove the necklace, relock the box, place it back in the drawer, and then sit back down as if nothing had happened.

No, that’s not plausible. Célestine must be the thief. And this is proven to be the case when the pearls are discovered in her room. Case closed.

I’m not sure what it is that makes us, as readers, refuse to believe that Célestine is guilty. Because we obviously don’t believe she’s guilty, or we wouldn’t bother reading the story. Every single bit of evidences points to her. She has ample opportunity to take the pearls – surely it would be far easier for her to get hold of a duplicate key to the jewellery box than it would for the chambermaid – and they’re actually found in her room. And yet, we instantly assume that this can’t be what happened. Yes – the pearls found in Célestine’s room turn out to be fake, but surely we’ve already discounted her guilt before that’s revealed?

Célestine does vehemently protest her innocence to Poirot, in French. She believes Poirot is French, and so will be on her side, and ignores his assertion that he’s Belgian (as most people seem to do). He’s Gallic enough to be a potential ally. But that’s not really the reason that we discount her guilt – after all, plenty of culprits protest their innocence, and even though Christie’s culprits are rarely anything other than born and bred English, Célestine’s nationality isn’t quite the perfect defence. No, the reason why don’t think Célestine did it is that she obviously did do it. There are no other suspects, so therefore it can’t have been her. We’re reading an Agatha Christie short story, so we just happily assume (with absolutely no grounds for it) that the patently guilty party must be innocent. It would have been impossible for the chambermaid to commit the crime, but we don’t rule out her guilt. The puzzle is simply how the chambermaid effected an impossible theft, because in this sort of story the impossible is always possible.

In the end, we find out that she did it with the help of an accomplice, some French chalk, an adjoining door, and that pesky duplicate key. The big clue (which, let’s be honest, we probably didn’t spot, despite Poirot clearly mentioning it a couple of times) was that Célestine left the room twice. The first time gave the chambermaid time to take the locked box from the drawer and pass it to her accomplice through the adjoining door to the next room. The accomplice could then use the spare key to unlock the box, take the pearls, and then relock the box. The second time Célestine left the room, the chambermaid could take back the box and replace it in the drawer.

And the accomplice? Literally the only other character in the story that isn’t Poirot, Hastings or one of the Opalsens. It’s the valet.

Who? You know, the valet who was briefly mentioned in one tiny paragraph. Turns out he and the chambermaid are in cahoots and are notorious jewel thieves in London.

Really? Yeah, I think Agatha was phoning this one in. She doesn’t even give the culprits names.

Despite the lacklustre mystery, there are a couple of nice bits in the story. It’s an early Sketch story, so Hastings is our narrator (which is always fun). My favourite bit about this story is that Hastings misses almost the entire investigation. Shortly after Poirot has investigated the scene and announced that he has to go to London to check things out, Hastings decides this case is a bit boring – ‘I thought you were working up to something exciting.’ – and goes to hang out with his mates instead.

When he gets back, Poirot has everything wrapped up and Japp has come to Brighton, arrested the thieves, and gone back to London. Poirot feels guilty about his friend missing all the fun, so offers to use his payment from Mr Opalsen to shout his friend another weekend in Brighton the following week. (An offer which Hastings, the old mooch, doesn’t turn down.)

Otherwise, the story is only notable for another outing for Poirot’s ‘large turnip of a watch’ – a detail from Christie’s characterization that I always enjoy. In this story, we find out that it’s ‘a family heirloom’.

And so, rather thin material for the adaptation. Especially as the adaptation would be the climax of the original run of hour-long episodes. Let’s see how the programme-makers played the hand they were dealt…

‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ was directed by Ken Grieve and written by Anthony Horowitz. As you might expect from his previous episodes, Horowitz attempts to stay as close as he can to Christie’s material, but isn’t averse to making changes in order to fit the story to the format of the show. And, here, he has to make quite a few changes.

The first major one is the alter the reason for the Opalsens’ visit to Brighton. Perhaps he was inspired by a line in Christie’s story: when Mrs Opalsen hears Poirot’s tales of jewel thefts he has investigated, she exclaims, ‘If it isn’t just like a play!’ And, in Horowitz’s adaptation, the Opalsens are actually in Brighton for a play. The TV Mr Opalsen is no longer a rich stockbroker, but rather a (slightly tawdry) stage producer, who is putting on a production of ‘Pearls Before Swine’, in which he will showcase an infamous set of pearls once given to an actress by a Czar.

(Guess what happens to the pearls after the first night of the play…)

The shift in backstory allows for a couple of other necessary changes. There are now more suspects, which is obviously important for the format of the episode. The Opalsens (played by Trevor Cooper and Sorcha Cusack) themselves are under the spotlight more: Poirot dislikes Mr Opalsen from the off, and the man is no longer one of Hastings’s ‘rich stockbroker’ chums. And there’s a playwright by the name of Andrew Hall (Simon Shepherd, in the first of his two appearances in Agatha Christie’s Poirot) with some dodgy secrets of his own. Hall is in a relationship with the (now only half-French) Célestine (played by Hermione Norris), and everyone – everyone – saw him outside the maid’s room on the night of the theft.

The introduction of Hall to the story is quite a clever change. On the one hand, it seems to introduce a whole new subplot to the admittedly thin story. On the other, it changes nothing. Célestine looks as guilty as ever, though now with the addition of an accomplice, so we still discount her (and Hall’s) guilt as easily as we did when reading the story.

Ultimately, for all the theatrical costuming, Horowitz doesn’t make any changes to the basic explanation for the theft. It’s still the chambermaid (played by Elizabeth Rider) whodunnit, though her accomplice is now a chauffeur rather than a valet (played by Karl Johnson), and he’s been masquerading as an American gent called Worthing in order to book the empty room next to the Opalsens’ suite.

Still… at least they get names this time, and a teeny little bit of backstory too. They’re Grace and Saunders in this version, and Grace used to work in a pub.

Backstory done.

Even with Horowitz’s treatment, the theft storyline in ‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ is pretty flimsy. There’s just not enough of a mystery here, even when you add in Andrew Hall’s debt and ‘Mr Worthing’. So, the adaptation distracts us with some ‘Poirot and friends go to the seaside’ misdirection (‘It is as a magical trick!’).

This episode near enough screams ‘Pay no attention to the rubbish necklace theft story – look at Poirot in a deckchair!’

At the beginning of Christie’s short story, Hastings comments that a ‘change of air’ would be good for Poirot. It isn’t clear whether this is because his vrai ami is under the weather, or because Hastings is feeling flush and wants a little getaway of his own (which, apparently, he can’t do without Poirot).

In the TV adaptation, this casual comment from Hastings is worked up into a more definite plot point. Poirot is sick, and his doctor advises that he’s rundown and in need of a holiday. He suggests that it would be good for Poirot to get out of London for a while, and to put all thoughts of investigating stuff out of his head. Naturally, this translates into a weekend away at the seaside and, for some reason, he needs Hastings to accompany him.

As in the short story, Poirot’s supposed break brings him into contact with the Opalsens, which leads him to investigate the inevitable theft of the necklace. This time, however, Hastings doesn’t miss the action, but rather spends a bit of time trying to convince Poirot himself to skip this one.

After the theft, Japp arrives, and we get a rare Japp-and-Hastings-boys-night-out, as the pair of them hit the funfair for no other reason than that we want to see Japp and Hastings at a funfair.

But wait! The gang’s not all here yet!

Poirot calls in Miss Lemon for assistance. She arrives quickly, but she’s absolutely fuming at Hastings for allowing Poirot to take on the case. Thank goodness she’s now on the scene to relieve the detective of some of his duties from Christie’s short story. In the source material, it is Poirot himself who goes to London to gather some vital information to crack the case. In the TV version, Miss Lemon takes this on, visiting jewellers and a pub to nose out the facts.

That’s right – it’s another outing for Miss Lemon Investigates! (I love Miss Lemon Investigates!)

There’s one final bit of the seaside storyline that’s worth a quick comment. When Poirot first arrives in Brighton, a man runs after him and claims to recognize him. Poirot nods and agrees that the man may well recognize him from the newspapers, to which the man replies, ‘You are Lucky Len, and I claim my ten guineas!’

This is a gag throughout the episode, culminating with Poirot himself having an encounter with Lucky Len.

Silly as it seems to be, I quite like this little addition to the story. ‘Lucky Len’ (of the Daily Echo) is a fictional version of a recurrent newspaper competition from the twentieth century (which occasionally makes a reappearance). ‘Lobby Lud’ first made his appearance in August 1927, in a competition run by the Westminster Gazette. The paper would give its readers a description of seaside town, a description of ‘Lobby Lud’ and a special passphrase to use. Anyone who spotted ‘Lobby Lud’ in the correct town could speak the passphrase to him and win a cash prize (£5 – not to be sniffed at in 1927).

The competition was madly popular, and it led to all sorts of imitations and variations over the years. Apparently, it was devised to boost newspaper circulation during wakes weeks – with working class communities often taking their annual fortnight’s holidays at the same time, and being far less likely to buy a newspaper while on their jollies, the papers offered an incentive for people to continuing buying – you had to be holding a copy of the newspaper when you confronted Lobby, otherwise he wouldn’t pay out.

The phrase ‘You are X, and I claim my X pounds,’ was apparently coined for a post-war Daily Mail competition (making it slightly anachronistic in its appearance in the episode). The Daily Mirror ran similar competitions, with their character of choice being Chalkie White. In an article first published in The Guardian in 1980, a ‘Chalkie White’ talked about the perils of taking on such a role:

‘[S]ometimes I hate it. You get this terrible sense of paranoia. Everywhere you go, you think everyone's looking at you.’

Tiddly om pom pom.

I like the ‘Lucky Len’ side-line, as it’s a nice piece of British seaside ephemera. However, outside of that – and Japp winning a teddy bear on the shooting range – there’s not much else going on in this one.

The denouement takes place in the theatre, with a culprit-in-the-spotlight moment that echoes ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’. The over-friendly bellboy is played by Tim Stern, in the first of two appearances in the series (he’ll be back in ‘Third Girl’). And Hastings is absolutely hopeless when they stumble upon the playwright being beaten up by a couple of wrong ’uns (bet Watson would’ve dealt with them).

And that’s it. That’s the end of the hour-long episodes. That’s all of Christie’s original Sketch stories adapted for television.

What about ‘The Lemesurier Inheritance’?

Shhh… don’t mention ‘The Lemesurier Inheritance’.

Time to wrap this post up, as we’re moving on to the run of feature-length episodes now. As I said at the beginning of this post, ‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ is a watershed moment for the series, but also for me and my own relationship with Poirot. It’s the end of the original format, and the end of my childhood.

La merde, as they say, est sur le point de devenir réel.

Next up… ‘Hercule Poirot’s Christmas’

Poirot Project: Dead Man’s Mirror (review)

This post is part of my 2016-19 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was an introduction to one of the minor recurring characters in Christie’s fiction: Mr Satterthwaite. The previous review was of ‘The Chocolate Box’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The seventh episode of the fifth series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot (the penultimate hour-long episode) was first broadcast on 28th February 1993. The episode was based on Christie’s (long) short story ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ (first published in 1937), which in turn was a revision of the slightly earlier, and much shorter, story ‘The Second Gong’ (1932). As with ‘Murder in the Mews’, ‘The Mystery of the Spanish Chest’ and ‘The Theft of the Royal Ruby’, ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ is more than a simple expansion of a shorter story – much is altered, revised, added and removed – and yet there is still, at its heart, something that recognizably links it to the earlier version.

Let’s begin, then, with the earliest version of the story. ‘The Second Gong’ appeared in the Strand Magazine in July 1932. For this post, I’m using the version of the story that was included in the 2010 HarperCollins eBook edition of Problem at Pollensa Bay (a collection first published in 1991.

‘The Second Gong’ opens just before dinner is served at Lytcham Close, ‘one of the most famous old houses in England’. The house’s owner is Hubert Lytcham Roche, an eccentric old man and the last in a long line of Lytcham Roches. One of Lytcham Roche’s eccentricities is an obsessive hatred of people being late for dinner, and so the residents of his house have long understood that they must obey the sound of the dinner gongs (sounded ten minutes apart). The story begins with the sound of the first gong… or is it the second gong?… there seems to be a little confusion…

Christie’s story sets us up for a quintessential country house mystery, so it’s important that we learn the cast of characters up front, as these will undoubtedly be our suspects. As well as Hubert Lytcham Roche – who we don’t actually ‘meet’ as such – there’s his wife (just ‘Mrs’ in this version of the story), who is ‘naturally vague in manner’ and ‘wearing floating draperies of an indeterminate shade of green’. The house’s other residents are: Harry Dalehouse (Lytcham Roche’s nephew), Joan Ashby (a friend of Harry’s), Geoffrey Keene (Lytcham Roche’s secretary), Diana Cleves (the Lytcham Roches’ adopted daughter), Gregory Barling (a family friend and financier) and Captain Marshall (the agent for the estate). Oh, and Digby the butler, who gets the honour of sounding the gongs.

At the sound of the second gong, the household gathers for dinner. It has been slightly delayed on this occasion, because apparently a visitor is arriving on a delayed train. Unusually, Lytcham Roche himself has not appeared in the drawing room (as is his custom), so the assembled party are happy that none of them can be accused of being late.

And then the door opens and…

‘[T]here advanced into the long drawing room a very small man, palpably a foreigner, with an egg-shaped head, a flamboyant moustache, and most irreproachable evening clothes.’

That’s right! It’s Hercule! (Just in case you thought Christie had forgot to put him in this one!)

Poirot has been summoned to Lytcham Close by its eccentric owner, as Lytcham Roche has become convinced that someone is swindling him. He wants the little Belgian detective to investigate, and Poirot has reluctantly agreed (‘M. Lytcham Roche, he is not quite the King of England, though he seems to think he is.)’

Introductions aside, the party realizes that their host is yet to make his appearance. Digby informs them that Lytcham Roche was last seen going into his study, though the door to this room is now locked. On getting no reply from the host, the group decide to break open the door… and discover Hubert Lytcham Roche, dead from a gunshot, at his desk.

‘The Second Gong’ is quite a short story, so the ensuing investigation moves a long quite quickly. An Inspector Reeves is called in, and quickly rules the death as suicide (mostly due to the locked door and a quite-obviously-fake note scrawled next to the dead man). Poirot asks questions about the various ‘gongs’ people heard, notes some footprints in the flowerbed, spots someone picking something up off the floor, and comments on a broken mirror in the dead man’s study.

And then, of course, he gathers everyone together and reveals that the death wasn’t suicide at all. It was murder: the ‘first gong’ that Joan Ashby heard was, in fact, the bullet hitting the gong. The murderer realized that the sound would reveal that the study door was actually open at the time of the murder, so arranged things to throw people off the scent. The door was locked, the body moved, the fake suicide note written – and the mirror was broken to make it look like it (rather than the gong) was in the path of the bullet. Then the killer left by the french windows, snuck back to the drawing room, and fired a service revolver out of the window so people would assume that gunshot was the fatal one. With a final flourish, Poirot reveals that the murderer was Geoffrey Keene, who had been using his position as private secretary to defraud his employer.

In a way, it’s a bit of a disappointing motive. Murderous private secretaries are a bit of a cliché in Golden Age detective fiction (second only to GPs, I’d imagine), and the revelation that the victim really was being swindled is a bit deflating. Sure, there are a few red herrings thrown in – Lytcham Roche is attempted for force his adopted daughter to marry his nephew (to continue the family line), despite the latter’s relationship with Joan Ashby; there’s a mention of Gregory Barling’s ‘wildcat schemes’, which have lost Lytcham Roche money; a rosebud from Diana Cleves’s bag is found near the scene of the crime. However, these are summarily dismissed by Poirot, and we’re left with nothing but a money-grubbing secretary.

Fast forward five years, and Christie decided to rework ‘The Second Gong’ into a longer piece entitled ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’. What’s fascinating to me here is the way she took (often quite minor) plot elements from the earlier story and developed them into much more interesting story devices. I’d argue that this is probably the most successful of the revised stories, because it seems to be a project in ‘revamping’ the somewhat flat bits of the original.

Let’s move on to ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ then…

The story begins with Poirot receiving a letter from a man who believes he is a victim of fraud. Here, though, the supposed victim is Gervase Chevenix-Gore of Hamborough Close. He requests that the detective be at his disposal should he require his assistance at any point.

Poirot is not impressed with the arrogance of this missive and decides to find out more about this Chevenix-Gore fella. He puts his glad-rags on and heads out to a party, specifically to seek out one of the guests who he knows will be able to help him.

That guest is Mr Satterthwaite.

There’s a passing reference to the ‘Crow’s Nest business’ to remind readers that Poirot and Mr Satterthwaite had previously become acquainted in Three Act Tragedy (because I’m reviewing the stories in the order of the adaptation rather than publication, I haven’t got to that one yet). However, there’s a suggestion here that the two men have continued a friendship beyond that particular adventure.

In fact, it seems here that Poirot is using Mr Satterthwaite as a sort of society consultant, due to the peculiar skills and personality we’ve seen emerge in the Harley Quin stories:

‘He was a keen observer of human nature, and if it is true that the looker-on knows most of the game, Mr Satterthwaite knew a good deal.’

Poirot gently questions Satterthwaite about his prospective client, and this is how he discovers that Chevenix-Gore is the last of his family line, that he is very wealthy, and that he is known for his eccentricities. Satterthwaite also outlines the family situation: Chevenix-Gore is married to Vanda (who gets a first name in this version of the story, and has ditched the ‘draperies of an indeterminate shade of green’ in favour of ‘amulets and scarabs’). The couple couldn’t have children, but they have an adopted daughter named Ruth (a girl ‘in the modern style’). And then there’s the nephew, Hugo Trent, who is the son of Chevenix-Gore’s sister.

Now, at this point, you would be forgiven for thinking that Satterthwaite is going to be a substitute Hastings in the story. ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ – like ‘The Second Gong’ before it – is both Hastings-less and Japp-less. George, Ariadne Oliver and Miss Lemon are also absent, though all of them had appeared in at least one Poirot story prior to the publication of ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’. The story’s set-up suggests that Satterthwaite is going to be filling the role of associate in this particular tale.

But it’s not to be. At the end of the exchange at the party, Poirot simply concedes that he probably will go to Hamborough Close if summoned. And that’s it. That’s the end of Satterthwaite’s part in the tale.

It’s a bit weird, to be honest. Why did the story need Satterthwaite at all? Why set up Satterthwaite as an invaluable source of society knowledge for Poirot when the man doesn’t appear in any further Poirot stories? Is this just a cheeky crossover? Or did Christie just want to remind us of one of her favourite characters?

I guess we’ll never know the real reason for Satterthwaite’s inclusion here. Personally, I prefer to think that it’s a little Easter egg for fans.

Anyway… off to Hamborough Close…

‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ follows pretty much the same template as ‘The Second Gong’, but with some important alterations.

Chevenix-Gore is an egotistical eccentric, like Lytcham Roche, who insists on strict observance of the dinner gongs. On the fatal night, there’s a confusion over who heard which gong (and, later, which of the ‘gongs’ was actually a gunshot), and the non-appearance of the host signals that something sinister has occurred. His wife is superstitious and rather vague – though she’s progressed from worrying about broken mirrors to believing she is the reincarnation of an Egyptian Queen.

Diana Cleves, the adopted daughter who is (allegedly) an orphaned distant cousin, becomes Ruth Chevenix-Gore. Ruth is similar in many ways to Diana (who was described as having a ‘daredevil grace’ and a ‘witchery in her dark eyes’), though there is less emphasis on her ability to charm every man she meets. Some of Diana’s dialogue is retained almost verbatim for Ruth, including her assertion that she was, in fact, very fond of her adopted father:

‘I don’t indulge in sob-stuff. But I shall miss him… I was fond of the Old Man.’

Like Lytcham Roche before him, Chevenix-Gore is determined to see the continuation of his family line through the marriage of his adopted daughter to his nephew (upon whom the estate is entailed). But as in the earlier story, this plan looks set to be thwarted as both are in love with other people.

The nephew here is Hugo Trent, who replaces Harry Dalehouse. Hugo is engaged to Susan Cardwell, who replaces Joan Ashby. Captain Marshall is switched for Captain John Lake, and in the final denouement it’s revealed that, not only is Ruth in love with the Captain, she’s been secretly married to him for three weeks.

Other substitutions abound… Inspector Reeves is replaced by Major Riddle, the Chief Constable of Westshire. Gregory Barling is replaced by Colonel Bury, who has convinced Chevenix-Gore to invest in something called the Paragon Rubber Company and is rather over-friendly with Vanda. (As an aside, I like the fact that Colonel Bury is described as a ‘tame cat’ about the house, while his counterpart in ‘The Second Gong’ was known for his ‘wildcat’ schemes.) The character of Geoffrey Keene, the murderous private secretary, is split into two for the later story: Godfrey Burrows is the secretary, but he is joined by a typist named Miss Lingard, who has been helping Chevenix-Gore write up his family history. And Digby becomes Snell, but he still gets to do the gonging.

However, while all these little character tweaks are interesting, there are two major changes to the story that are much more engaging.

Big Change 1: As the titles suggest, there’s a shift in focus on furniture. In the earlier story, a lot of attention is given to the gong, and to the fact that some members of the household believe they heard a sound before Digby sounded the actual first gong. Much of the investigation involves ascertaining who heard what noise, before it’s eventually revealed that the ‘first gong’ was the bullet from the first gunshot, the ‘second gong’ was really the first gong, and the gunshot was a fake second shot fired by the murderer to throw the timings off. While the later story retains all of this (with one slight difference), there’s somewhat more emphasis placed on the broken mirror in the dead man’s study, with Vanda quoting Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott and Poirot likening the investigation itself to a reflection in a shattered mirror.

Big Change 2: Shock! horror! Both the murderer and motive are changed (sort of). As I’ve said, the character of the secretary is split in two in the later story. The culprit turns out to be one half of this split. But rather than Burrows (who is closest to the character of Keene from the original), the murderer is revealed to be Miss Lingard, the mild-mannered typist. And she didn’t do it to cover up a financial fraud.

The big surprise in ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ is the revelation that Ruth is, in fact, Chevenix-Gore’s illegitimate niece. Her father was Gervase’s brother, following a fling with a typist who gave her baby up to the family to avoid scandal. Miss Lingard was that typist, and she confesses to murdering Chevenix-Gore to prevent him from changing his will to disown Ruth unless she marries Hugo Trent. Interestingly – despite the fact that this is clearly a ridiculous reason to murder someone – Poirot is sympathetic to the plight of (secret) mother and (unacknowledged) daughter, allowing Miss Lingard the courtesy of keeping her motive secret.

(This is also one of the many Poirot stories in which the murderer escapes the noose – almost always an indication of the detective’s sympathy. In this case, Poirot doesn’t have to resort to leaving Miss Lingard alone with a weapon/poison/stash of cocaine, as he reveals with a bizarrely happy flourish that she’s got heart trouble and ‘will not live many weeks’.)

Nearly time to move on to the adaptation (because I really want to talk about tubular furniture), but just quickly before I do… I want to share two of the tiny and less significant changes that I nevertheless enjoyed in ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’.

Tiny Change 1: In both ‘The Second Gong’ and ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’, the murderer’s escape from a seemingly locked room is through the french windows. Poirot reveals that, if the window is pulled to in the right way, the catch will fall down and make it appear they were shut from the inside. In the earlier story, the detective simply states this as a matter of fact. However, in the revised version, he gives a little explanation of how he knows that is pure Poirot. After asking Susan Cardwell if she’s acquainted with any burglars (!), he makes the following pronouncement:

‘The chief constable, he, too, has not had the advantages of a friendly relationship with them. His connection with the criminal classes has always been strictly official. With me that is not so. I had a very pleasant chat with a burglar once. He told me an interesting thing about french windows – a trick that could sometimes be employed if the fastening was sufficiently loose.’

I love the way this conjures up an entire storyline that is never really explained.

Tiny Change 2: In ‘The Second Gong’, the murderous secretary creates the fake gunshot illusion by firing a service revolver out of the drawing room window to throw confusion on the time of death. Obviously, this isn’t an option for Miss Lingard in ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’, so she creates her illusion using other means… she blows up a paper bag and bangs it. Poirot finds the remnants of the bag in the wastepaper basket in drawing room, and this clinches things for him:

‘The paper bag trick was one that would suggest itself to a woman – an ingenious home-made device.’

I think Poirot is suggesting here that female murderers are more ingenious, and more inclined to improvise home-made devices out of bits of stationery and children’s tricks, which is ironic given the next-but-one episode in the series.

Time to have a look at the TV version…

‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ was directed by Brian Farnham and written by Anthony Horowitz. The TV version of the story is even more mirror-heavy than Christie’s 1937 story. It begins in an auction room, with Poirot bidding on a fancy mirror on which he appears to have completely set his heart. He is outbid, unfortunately, but accepts this with good grace.

The successful bidder is, it transpires, Gervase Chevenix (played by Iain Cuthbertson) – there’s no Gore here, as it’s a family show (har har!). This Gervase is somewhat different from Christie’s character (and his Lytcham Roche predecessor) as he isn’t landed gentry, but rather a wealthy art collector. He also, sadly, doesn’t look like a Viking (both Chevenix-Gore and Lytcham Roche are described as having ‘Viking beards’ for some reason).

When Chevenix realizes the identity of his mirror rival, he asks Poirot to visit his home. As in the previous versions of the story, he says he believes he is the victim of fraud. And, as in previous versions, Poirot finds the man’s demands rather arrogant. Here, though, there’s an added sweetener… Chevenix suggests that he might perhaps be up for exchanging the mirror for Poirot’s services. And the little detective is sold.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Mr Satterthwaite is removed from the adaptations of the two Poirot stories in which he appears, so Poirot doesn’t get any inside information from his friend beforehand. Instead, he travels to Chevenix’s home with Hastings, and the two of them meet Susan Cardwell (Tushika Bergen) on the train. In this version, it’s Susan who fills in some of the necessary background.

Like a lot of Horowitz’s adaptations, the plot of this episode pretty much follows that of Christie’s story, and some of the dialogue is retained as well. Nevertheless, the story is quite a long one, and so there is a bit of alteration here and there to fit the TV episode format.

Colonel Bury is absent from the adaptation, and the character of John Lake (played by Richard Lintern, in the first of his two appearances in the series – he’ll be back in Mrs McGinty’s Dead) is changed to fill this gap. No longer a ‘Captain’ or an ‘agent’, Lake is now a family friend who has persuaded Chevenix to invest in a property development scheme that may or may not be a fraud (it’s no Paragon Rubber Company, but it’s a decent enough equivalent). As Chevenix is no longer a member of an ancient gentry family, Miss Lingard (played by Fiona Walker) is now employed to help him with art history, rather than family history, research, and Godfrey Burrows is dropped entirely.

Ruth Chevenix (Emma Fielding) is still the adopted daughter – though I feel this version of the character really lacks the ‘witchery’ of her original counterpart, Diana Cleves – and Chevenix still has plans to see her marry his nephew, Hugo Trent (Jeremy Northam). Because of the changes to the status of the characters, this proposed marriage seems more to do with Chevenix’s overbearing and obnoxious personality than any continuation of family legacy or inheritance – given there’s no estate or entailment here, he has no reason not to just name Ruth his heir or to divide up his wealth between the two of them. This Gervase is just petty for the sake of it.

The final change to the dramatis personae sees Major Riddle – himself a substitute for Inspector Reeves – replaced with Inspector Japp. This isn’t the most controversial alteration ever; however, Japp is more inclined than his predecessors to accept that it’s a case of murder, rather than suicide, so he’s sticks out the investigation to the end.

Snell (James Greene) still gets to do the gong.

The location used for this episode is quite interesting and, in a roundabout way, this relates to the biggest change in Hugo Trent’s character in the episode.

Gervase Chevenix’s house in this episode is played by Marylands, a country house in Surrey built in Spanish style in 1929-31 by the architect Oliver Hill. Hill’s other work includes the Midland Hotel in Morecambe – which was one of the locations used in ‘Double Sin’ – and Joldwynds in Surrey – which was used in both ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’ and ‘The Theft of the Royal Ruby’.

This isn’t massively earth-shattering – after all, there’s a limited number of surviving buildings in the UK that fit the style and aesthetic of these early Poirot episodes (hence the reuse of Joldwynds, for instance). But I think the recurrence of Oliver Hill’s work is worthy of at least a note.

But this leads me to think about tubular furniture…

As Chevenix is no longer a titled landowner, his nephew can no longer be a gentry heir waiting to acquire an entailed estate. The TV version of Hugo Trent has to at least attempt to earn a living. In a nice creative touch, Horowitz has his Hugo trying his hand at making tubular steel furniture. Yep. That’s right.

This may seem like a rather specific and idiosyncratic pursuit – it’s certainly one that Gervase Chevenix is unhappy about, as he has refused to give financial support to Hugo’s struggling business – but on reflection it’s a really neat nod to the aesthetic of the early ITV episodes and acknowledgement of the very style that led to the repeated use of Oliver Hill buildings.

Allow me to explain my thinking here…

Tubular steel chairs might be commonplace today, but in the early part of the twentieth century they were avant-garde and represented the cutting-edge of design innovation (which is briefly alluded to in the episode itself). This furniture style was pioneered by the Bauhaus studio, and developed by German company Thonet. Manufacture began in earnest in 1930, meaning that, in the world of ITV’s Poirot (with its permanent setting of 1936/1937), this is absolutely the newest thing in furniture design.

In the UK, the tubular steel baton was picked up by Practical Equipment Ltd. (PEL), a company founded in Birmingham in 1931 with the hope of replicating Thonet’s success. Unlike Hugo’s endeavour, PEL were a successful company throughout the 1930s, finding domestic markets for many of their products (such a stackable chairs) and receiving high-profile commissions.

Among PEL’s commissions were Embassy Court in Brighton, which featured briefly in ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’ and the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, which had a much bigger role in ‘The ABC Murders’. While none of this is particularly significant, I guess, I like this connection as it implies that Hugo Trent is playing a role in designing the very aesthetic that we associate with the series.

And although that aesthetic is very much the creation of the show’s creative team, it’s not completely divorced from Agatha Christie’s own experience either. One of PEL’s designers was the architect Wells Coates, who built (amongst other things) the Isokon Flats in Hampstead. While we might associate Christie more with country houses, especially Greenway in Devon, she was a resident at Isokon Flats between 1941-47. Again, it’s not the most significant connection, but it’s enough to make me appreciate the tubular furniture of ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ just a little bit more.

To end this post, I’m going to mention the two things that bug me about the episode. And one that just confuses me.

Firstly, in a move that we’ve seen in other episodes in the series, some details that are hidden in the source text are made explicit from the get-go in the TV version. Most notably, Ruth and John’s secret wedding – which is revealed in an outburst towards the end of Christie’s story – is shown on-screen right at the beginning of the episode. I have little else to say except I don’t like this decision.

Secondly, the complete over-exaggeration of Vanda Chevenix’s Egyptian fascination doesn’t work for me. In ‘The Second Gong’, Mrs Lytcham Roche was a ‘vague’ woman, who was a tad superstitious. In Christie’s revision, Vanda Chevenix-Gore was more definitively interested in ‘occultism’ and believed herself to be a reincarnated Egyptian queen.

But the TV Vanda (played by Zena Walker) outdoes both of her counterparts. Not only does she fully believe in the Egyptian afterlife and various other hodge-podge occult ideas, she also has a ‘spirit guide’ named Saffra to whom she talks every now and then like some sort of art deco Derek Acorah. In a rather desperate attempt to zhoosh up the denouement, the murderous Miss Lingard uses Vanda’s delusions against her, by impersonating Saffra (from a cupboard) and attempting to force the hapless Mrs Chevenix to hang herself in penance for killing Gervase. Because… why not?

Of course, Poirot and Japp are on hand to pull Miss Lingard out of the cupboard and remind Vanda that she didn’t actually kill her own husband, no matter what the mad-typist-pretending-to-be-an-Egyptian-spirit-guide keeps shouting in a spooky voice. This doesn’t really work for me, but it does lead on to a small but unsettling change that’s made right at the end of the episode.

In the TV version, Poirot himself works out that Miss Lingard is Ruth’s mother (he doesn’t have to wait for her confession). However, as in Christie’s 1937 story, Miss Lingard begs the detective (here accompanied by Japp) to keep the secret from her illegitimate daughter. As in the earlier version, Poirot gives her his word that he won’t reveal Ruth’s parentage.

As I’ve noted above, in Christie’s story, Miss Lingard is spared the noose by her imminent death from ‘heart troubles’. Here, though, the story ends with the murdering typist thanking Poirot for his discretion and claiming that she’s only ever cared about Ruth’s happiness. ‘I don’t care what happens to me,’ she exclaims. And as she does so, we get one final shot of Poirot’s (pained? sympathetic?) face, as the image of a ghostly noose is overlaid.

It’s one of the creepier endings in the early series – and one that hints at the darker tone that’s to come. But it also serves to remind us that this Miss Lingard will have no convenient heart troubles – it’s off to the gallows with her.

On that bleak note, it’s time to move on to the next episode – and the final short story adaptation of the series, which also marks a milestone in my own relationship to Agatha Christie’s Poirot (but more on that anon).

The next post will be ‘Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’

Poirot Project: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (review)

This post is part of my 2016-19 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘The Case of the Missing Will’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The fifth episode of the fifth series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 14th February 1993… almost exactly 26 years ago… how time flies! The episode was based on the short story of the same name, which was first published in The Sketch on 24th October 1923. And it’s a corker of an episode.

But let’s talk about Christie’s short story first…

Have you ever thought that Poirot and Hastings’s relationship is a bit too… well… close? Or rather, a bit closed off? While they’re obviously very good friends, and each has the occasional acquaintance who pops up in a story, they don’t really do much socializing with people outside their little duo. Almost all the people they spend time with are clients or suspects. The only person they repeatedly refer to as a friend is Japp, and he’s more a work colleague. They just don’t seem to have any relationships that aren’t formal or professional.

‘Poirot and I had many friends and acquaintances of an informal nature.’

Oops… sorry, Hastings. My bad.

I can’t decide whether this abrupt opening is defensive or lazy. It’s a pretty heavy-handed way to set the scene, either way. The point is, Hastings and Poirot are hanging out with one of the many, many friends – a Dr Hawker – when their evening party (yes, the pair are definitely living together in this one) is interrupted by a ‘distracted female’:

‘Oh, doctor, you’re wanted! Such a terrible voice. It gave me a turn, it did indeed.’

The distracted female is Dr Hawker, and the terrible voice was that of Hawker’s patient, one Count Foscatini, who was calling to beg for help after an attack. Hawker, Poirot and Hastings hurry to Foscatini’s flat and discover the man has been murdered. They investigate, and then call in their ‘Scotland Yard friend, Inspector Japp’ to wrap things up. (Japp proceeds to arrest the wrong guy, by the way.)

‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’ is an interesting story for two reasons (in addition to Hastings’s weird compulsion to point out how many friends he and Poirot have). Firstly, it continues Christie’s minor fascination with fancy new-build and serviced apartments. This was first seen in ‘The Adventure of the Cheap Flat’ and would be seen again in ‘The Third Floor Flat’. (Don’t be confused here… the order of publication is different to the order of adaptation.)

In ‘The Adventure of the Cheap Flat’ and ‘The Third Floor Flat’ the stories include details of modern design features, particularly fancy-pants dustbin storage and service staircases. In ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’, Foscatini lives in a full-blown new-fangled serviced apartment:

‘Regent’s Court was a new block of flats, situated just off St John’s Wood Road. They had only recently been built, and contained the latest service devices.’

Christie’s mild fascination with serviced apartments and their thoroughly modern mechanisms for murder inspired a bit of a mild fascination in me when I first saw these episodes. However, I’ll admit I don’t know a huge amount about the history of this type of building. Wikipedia tells me that ‘Regent’s Court’ in this story was fictional, so I have to assume it isn’t related to the current ‘Regent Court’ portered apartment building near St John’s Road – the proximity to Regent’s Park explains the similarity of names between the fictional and real-life buildings. Nevertheless, Christie didn’t invent the concept of a ‘new block of flats’ with ‘the latest service devices’.

Doing internet searches for the history of ‘serviced apartments in London’ is a bit tricky, as we seem to be going through a bit of a serviced apartments renaissance (flats like those in Regent Court, which have a porter service and function as a sort of vertical gated community). But I have found a few little interesting nuggets of information…

The type of apartment inhabited by Count Foscatini experience a brief boom in popularity in the 1920s and 30s. I can’t remember where I read this (so no footnote I’m afraid), but some have put this popularity down to the changing fortunes of the upper classes. After WWI, it became increasingly difficult for rich men to staff a house with live-in servants – and, in some cases, to run a large house at all – and so a smaller, more modern residence with a permanent staff must have appealed. While some residents of these apartment blocks might have a single live-in (e.g. Mrs Grant in ‘The Third Floor Flat’ has a maid, and Poirot himself will take valet George with him when he moves to Whitehaven Mansions), the main work of the building is done by a shared staff who look after the needs of all residents.

One of the earliest examples of this arrangement I’ve been able to find is St James’s Court (now St James’s Hotel) on Park Place. This building – it is claimed – open in 1892 as a block of 44 serviced flats. It described itself as a ‘gentleman’s chamber’, suggesting it was somewhere between a pied-à-terre and a gentleman’s club. Presumably, many of the impossibly posh blokes who owned/rented the flats (like David Cameron’s great-great-grandfather-in-law, for example) would have a ‘primary’ or ‘country’ residence elsewhere.

I don’t think St James’s Court is quite indicative of the type of flats Christie is using in her stories, though. Her apartment blocks tend to be inhabited by wealthy professionals and bright young things, rather than the landed gentry. Prospective tenants are young married couples, single women, consulting detectives and blackmailers, and the flats will be the primary residence for the inhabitants. By the 20s and 30s, these new apartment blocks were accommodating a wave of fashionable city centre living, where the wealthy urbanistas increasingly rely on staff rather than servants (note that Regent’s Court in this story employs a ‘chef’ and not a ‘cook’). Guy Morgan’s Florin Court (built in 1936) and William Bryce Binnie’s Addisland Court (also 1936) are surviving examples of later art deco-designed blocks. Claire Bennie makes this comment on her website London Deco Flats:

‘What these wonderful 1930s buildings remind us is that there used to be a particular kind of tenant, on a medium income, who demanded porterage, parking, perhaps a maid, and sometimes dining and sports facilities.’

The descriptions of city flats in Christie’s earlier stories suggests that the ‘particular kind of tenant’ was also in the market for rented housing in the 1920s. That’s as much as I know about serviced apartments, and I’m sure I’ve probably made some horrible errors in my summary. Please – please – if you have more info on this specific bit of British housing history, let me know. I’ve been interested in this type of flat since February 1993, so I’d love a reading list!

Now… back to the story… and the second reason ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’ is interesting. I’ve gone on a bit already, but I reckon I can sum this one up a bit more quickly…

When Poirot and Hastings arrive at Regent’s Court, they discover Count Foscatini’s valet-butler Graves, who, like many a helpful and deferential servant in Golden Age fiction, gives the detective a careful and thorough outline of his employer’s movements and visitors. He describes the gentlemen who called to see his master the previous day, the dinner that was served on the evening of the murder, and a simple overview of his master’s entertaining habits. Graves explains that he served a meal to his master and guests, and then was given the evening off. He went out at 8.30pm and returned just in time to find Poirot poring over the body of his erstwhile employer.

Graves’s evidence is standard. This is how servants are used in so much Golden Age detective fiction – they’re essentially depersonalised narrators of the ‘background’ events of the case. They give neutral evidence of the household’s comings and goings, the timings of meals, the layout and security arrangements of the building. In these cases, the word of the servant is taken as a matter of fact, because the staff are simply plot devices to convey the material situation in which the murder has taken place. At times, a detective like Poirot might be able to push a servant to speculate, gossip or reveal a secret they are not supposed to know but, again, this almost always taken as a matter of fact.

Now, sometimes, a servant might have a secret of their own. They may be guilty of a crime – fiddling the household accounts, for instance, or colluding with some wrong ’un from outside the household. They may not be who they claim to be, or they may have falsified their references, but they are never seriously in the frame for the murder.

The whole point of Golden Age detective fiction is that the murderer represents the dark heart of the domestic set-up. It’s the spouse, the child, the parent, the family doctor. The call is coming from inside the house.

Agatha Christie does love playing tricks though. In ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’, she assumes that we assume that the valet-butler’s evidence is neutral evidence, a statement of fact. It’s enough for Hastings and Japp, who take everything Graves says at face value, leading to the hunt for Foscatini’s dinner guest and the erroneous arrest of Ascanio.

It’s not enough for Poirot (naturally):

‘What evidence have we that Ascanio and his friend, or two men posing as them, ever came to the flat that night? Nobody saw them go in; nobody saw them go out. We have the evidence of one man and a host of inanimate objects.’

The characteristic Christie misdirection in this story was making us think we were listening to a butler, when really we were listening to a man.

(As a sidenote, I now wonder if my two ‘interesting points’ are actually related. The standard country house mystery has the murderer at the heart of the family/household, then how can this be updated to reflect the new fashionable urban living arrangements of the middle classes? For unattached men like Foscatini – well-to-do city renters – their household is their valet.)

(As a more pressing sidenote… OMG! What’s the deal with 1920s speed-eating??

To recap… Graves claims that two men came to visitor his master. A dinner (for three) is ordered and served at 8pm. This is a fact corroborated by the Regent’s Court chef. The meal consists of the following:

‘Soup julienne, filet de sole normande, tournedos of beef, and a rice soufflé.’

Okay, looks like a perfectly fine dinner. Apparently the men casually conversed about ‘politics, the weather, and the theatrical world’ while dining. Graves then placed the port on the table, served them coffee, and headed out to meet a friend.

Graves left the apartment at around 8.30pm.

8.30pm??

So, these men managed to put away soup, sole normande, beef tournedos, a little bit of rice soufflé (admittedly most of it was left) and some coffee, all the while conversing merrily… in half an hour? Seriously??

This gets even more indigestion-inducing when we discover the truth: in fact, there were no visitors, Foscatini was dead before 8 o’clock, and Graves himself consumed all of the ordered food. And then smoked a cigar and two cigarettes.

And then left the apartment at around 8.30pm.

Is it even possible to eat that much food in half an hour? He ate three quarters of a fish, for god’s sake! And around 15-21oz of steak! No wonder he bursts back into the flat later ‘with every appearance of grief and agitation’.)

Anyway… that’s enough beef for this vegetarian; I’ve spent enough time Googling what ‘sole’ and ‘tournedos’ actually are and asking my husband cryptic questions about how much fish he could eat in a single sitting. Let’s move on to the adaptation…

The episode was directed by Brian Farnham and written by Clive Exton. And it’s just excellent.

The beauty of this episode is that Christie’s story is retained faithfully, but the episode is fleshed out with the expansion of subplots and some lovely storylines for ‘the gang’. While this is true for a number of other early episodes of Poirot, the Poirot, Hastings and Miss Lemon storylines here are just beautiful.

Ironically, given that Christie’s story begins with Hastings curtly announcing that he and Poirot do have other friends, you know, the TV episode begins with him being utterly baffled by the concept of Miss Lemon having a social life. He enters Poirot’s office in a tizzy, because he’s discovered that Miss Lemon… isn’t there. Poirot tells him calmly that Miss Lemon is out with a gentleman friend.

I love this storyline – it belongs completely and utterly to the TV show and has absolutely no basis in any of Christie’s fiction. I love what it reveals about the ‘family’ dynamic of Poirot, Hastings and Miss Lemon, with Hastings assuming the role of protective older brother and Poirot that of affectionate pater. I love that Poirot insists Miss Lemon’s friend comes to tea, and that both men appear to be sizing him up in their different ways. I love Miss Lemon’s comments on the class system (‘the way we were all brought up to think’) when she discovers Edwin is a butler and not a private secretary. And I love the fact that this is (I think) the first time we hear someone call Miss Lemon ‘Felicity’.

But, more importantly, I love the way the gang react when Edwin Graves’s (Leonard Preston) crimes are revealed. After apprehending the murdering, cheating butler (more on that shortly), Hastings gives him a proper punch in the chops:

‘You swine! That’s for Miss Lemon!’

Avuncular Poirot, however, has to break the news to Miss Lemon. And I love this too. The little Belgian tiptoes into Miss Lemon’s office, prepared to gently explain that her boyfriend was (a) married and (b) a murderer. It’s such a sweet scene, and I love the way Suchet conveys Poirot’s palpable concern and pain on Miss Lemon’s behalf.

But I also love the fact that Miss Lemon doesn’t care. She has to ask Poirot who ‘Edwin’ is, because Mr Graves is dead to her. Not because he killed his employer. Not because he stole a load of money. Not because he had a secret wife. Not because he was weirdly proficient at speed-eating beef. But because he was planning to have Foscatini’s cat put to sleep. For Felicity Lemon, that is the ultimate crime.

The Miss Lemon storyline is probably my favourite bit of this episode, but the Hastings bit comes a very close second. As cats are to Miss Lemon, cars are to Captain Hastings. And oh boy! There’s a car and a half here.

In this episode, Hastings has decided to ditch his beloved Lagonda and purchase a swanky Eliso Freccia (a fictional Italian make). In bare plot terms, this is done to allow an expansion of the ‘sinister Italian’ red herring of Christie’s story. In the original, Foscatini is not a count, but rather a blackmailer. Ascanio – presumed to be a political assassin – is actually Foscatini’s victim, and his earlier visit to the man’s flat was for the purpose of paying him off. (In the story, as in the TV version, Foscatini is revealed to be a very reasonable blackmailer.)

In the adaptation, Foscatini’s web of blackmail goes further, involving Bruno Vizzini (David Neal) and Margherita Fabbri (Anna Mazzotti) of the Eliso Freccia firm. This allows for two further expansions: (1) the obligatory reference to the brewing conflict in Europe, as Vizzini’s ‘crime’ is to have supported anti-fascist groups in Italy; and (2) a somewhat underwhelming subplot for Japp, where he’s on the trail of the ‘Maznada’, an Italian organized crime family that’s ‘older than the Mafia’. But while these are perfectly sensible reasons for including the Italian car firm in the episode, I think we all know the real reason for including it… it’s an excuse for some Hastings car porn!

There’s a bit of a joke among some fans of the series that early episodes shoehorned in car chases at the drop of a hat. Hastings does tend to jump behind the wheel with ease in the first couple of series, but ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’ gives us the ne plus ultra of car chases.

When the police descend on Chichester to apprehend the absconding Mr Graves, the murderous valet spins his car round and floors it. Hastings spots an opportunity, jumps into a waiting Eliso Freccia car (apparently played by an Alfa Romeo 2900A with its understandably protective owner body-doubling for Hugh Fraser, in case you’re interested) and goes in pursuit. What follows is a brilliant sequence, in which the two men wheel their rather cumbersome cars through increasingly narrow streets, at a speed that could hardly be called ‘breakneck’. A passer-by shrieks and drops her crockery; the chase is held up by a wandering flock of geese; holiday-makers in an open-top bus point in amazement. It’s pure magic.

Fun as the car chase is, I do have some concerns about the Eliso Freccia car. You see, I paused the episode at the moment Hastings signs the purchase contract…

Woah… how much? £1900? So, about £130,000 in today’s money? Where on earth did Hastings get that much money from? Why is he still mooching off Poirot if he’s got £1900 burning a hole in his pocket? Once again, the finances of Captain Hastings baffle me.

Argh… it’s the early hours of the morning and I’m in danger of getting sidetracked by Hastings’s bank balance again. Time to wrap this one up, I think. Just a couple of additional points of interest with this one…

1. I like that Hastings employs the same visualisation techniques as Miss Lemon used in ‘Double Sin’ when she lost the flat keys. Here, Hastings has to cast his mind back to seeing a postcard of Graves’s boat in order to remember where it was docked.

2. The (fictional) Regent’s Court of Christie’s story is replaced by a real building – Addisland Court. The scenes at Foscatini’s flat were actually filmed on location at Addisland Court, which makes this block of flats one of the few buildings to actually play itself in the series.

3. The gut-busting reality of what Graves actually does clearly bothered Exton as much as it bothers me, as he makes some subtle changes to ease the strain on Graves’s digestive tract. While the menu is identical to that in Christie’s short story (the interview with the chef is one of the scenes adapted almost verbatim from the source), the TV Graves only pretends there is one guest coming. Thus, he only has to Man-versus-Food two full dinners, instead of three. Exton also makes a minor adjustment to the timings: the dinner is served at 8pm, but Graves doesn’t go out until just before nine, giving him a little bit longer to finish the steaks.

4. Poirot doesn’t respond well to the arrival of Count Foscatini’s cat.

And with that, it’s time to move on. The next episode is ‘The Chocolate Box’

Poirot Project: The Case of the Missing Will (review)

This post is part of my 2016-19 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘The Yellow Iris’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The fourth episode of the fifth series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 7th February 1993. It was based on the short story of the same name, which was published in The Sketch on October 1923 – though the closeness of this adaptation is something I’m going to come back to shortly.

Christie’s short story is a neat – but rather straightforward – little puzzle for the great detective. It begins with Poirot and Hastings receiving a new client, which Hastings says is ‘rather a pleasant change from [their] routine work’ (though he doesn’t say what, exactly, he counts as ‘routine work’). Hastings’s happiness is short-lived, however, as it transpires that the client, Violet Marsh, is… shock, horror!... a New Woman:

‘I am not a great admirer of the so-called New Woman myself, and, in spite of her good looks, I was not particularly prepossessed in her favour.’

Poirot seems to quite like Violet, though, so the reader is prepossessed in her favour. Is this fair? Hastings can be a pretty bad judge of women… but then again, so can Poirot. After all, it’s Poirot who is taken in by Nick Buckley and Jane Wilkinson, and he’s got a definite soft spot for Jacqueline de Bellefort and (obviously) Vera Rossakoff. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry too much about these murderers and jewel thieves, as Violet Wilson has come with quite a different sort of puzzle.

Violet was the niece (and only relative) of rich businessman Andrew Marsh. During his lifetime, her uncle held ‘peculiar and deeply-rooted ideas as to the upbringing of women’, and was not happy when his niece decided to go to Girton. To teach her that her new-fangled ‘book learning’ is no match for his masculine brains, he uses his will as a final posthumous battle of wits: Marsh leaves all his property to Violet for one year, during which time she must ‘prove her wits’ or the fortune will pass to charities.

After Marsh died, Violet made a quick search of the house, couldn’t find anything obvious, and so immediately came to hire Poirot to solve the puzzle for her. Which he does.

It really is as simple as that.

Poirot visits Crabtree Manor, Marsh’s former home, spots a couple of inconsistencies, and then uses these to ascertain the whereabouts of a second will (dated shortly after the first), which leaves everything unconditionally to Violet. To be brutally honest, it’s a bit of a waste of his excellent little grey cells.

Hastings is thoroughly disappointed by the whole business. He seems bored as he narrates Poirot’s forensic search of the house, unimpressed by Poirot’s discovery of a label that doesn’t match the others, and confused by a last-minute epiphany on a train. As Poirot makes a dash back to Crabtree Manor for the big reveal, Hastings is grumpy and complains that Poirot isn’t paying him enough attention.

Despite his friend’s strop, Poirot is delighted by the case and sums it all up with ‘triumph’. He’s worked out the puzzle, and his client has won the battle of wits. He suggests that this means she has ‘justified her choice of life and elaborate education’, and also that her uncle’s trick was always intended to vindicate his niece’s academic career (assuming she was successful, of course).

Cranky Hastings sees things differently. ‘The old man really won,’ he grumbles.

‘“But no, Hastings. It is your wits that go astray. Miss Marsh proved the astuteness of her wits and the value of the higher education for women by at once putting the matter in my hands. Always employ the expert. She has amply proved her rights to the money.”
“It’s not fair! You never listen to me! I wish I’d never been born!” I shouted, as I ran out of the room and slammed the door.’

Okay. I made that last bit up.

‘The Case of the Missing Will’ is probably not on many Top 10 Poirot Stories lists. It’s a little bit of fun for both Poirot and the reader (not Hastings though), but it’s not the most memorable case. Nevertheless, Christie was clearly quite happy with the central conceit, as it’s one of the plots she reused later on.

The Miss Marple story ‘Strange Jest’ was first published in the US in 1941 and then in the Strand Magazine in 1944 (under the title ‘A Case of Buried Treasure’).* In this little tale, Miss Marple is introduced to kissing-(third)-cousins Edward Rossiter and Charmian Stroud, the sole heirs to their shared Great-Great-Uncle Mathew. Edward and Charmian are convinced that their Uncle Mathew was in possession of a large fortune in gold bullion, but when he died there was no sign of any fortune. Their friend Jane Helier convinces the lovebirds to enlist Miss Marple’s assistance to get their hands on the loot.

As in ‘The Case of the Missing Will’, the detective here accompanies the putative heirs to the dead man’s house, rifles through his property, and then produce the booty with a flourish. But it’s the differences between the stories that are most interesting.

What I really like about this pair of stories is the way that Christie fitted each of the ‘missing will’ pranks to the idiosyncrasies of the respective sleuths. So, in the earlier story, the clue comes in the form of a label that doesn’t match the others; in the later one, the hints come in sly uses of outdated slang (‘gammon and spinach’, ‘all my eye and Betty Martin’). In ‘Missing Will’, Poirot pores over an account of the day of the will’s writing and finds an interesting item in the schedule; in ‘Strange Jest’, Miss Marple sees a possible parallel with her own Uncle Henry.

It’s lucky that Charmian, Edward and Violet picked their detectives so carefully. I wonder if Miss Marple would’ve guessed Andrew Marsh’s invisible ink – and what would Poirot have made of Uncle Mathew?

I must admit, I really warmed towards ‘The Case of the Missing Will’ after I read ‘Strange Jest’. I thoroughly recommend reading them as companion pieces to remind you of the important differences between Christie’s two famous sleuths.

And now… controversy! It’s time to look at the ITV adaptation of ‘The Case of the Missing Will’, and the first Poirot episode to veer substantively away from its source story. Dun dun dunnnnnn…

‘The Case of the Missing Will’ was directed by John Bruce and written by Douglas Watkinson. It does not follow the plot of Christie’s short story, though it makes some allusions to it.

I’m just going to get this out of the way up front: I don’t think this is a problem. Christie’s short story would not have made a good episode of the TV show – or, at least, not one that would have fit with the rest of the series. I know the 90s was a simpler time, but I just can’t imagine us all curling up in front of the TV to watch David Suchet meticulously looking through drawers for an hour while Hugh Fraser stropped about in the background. I mean, obviously I’d watch that now. But I probably wouldn’t have liked it so much when I was fourteen. I would’ve probably changed over to… *checks 1993 TV listings*… So Haunt Me?? Urgh. Only one thing for it…

Picture Credit: TV Whirl

Fortunately, Douglas Watkinson stopped teenage me from having to make the choice between So Haunt Me and Bamboozle, as the TV version of ‘The Case of the Missing Will’ is a pretty standard Poirot episode. It’s also, in my opinion, very well done – I only realized that it’s not actually a Christie story years later when I started reading the early Poirot short stories.

So, let’s talk about the episode…

We begin with a flashback to 1926. A man named Andrew Marsh (played by Mark Kingston) is seeing in the New Year with friends. As the clock strikes twelve, he announces that he has made a will leaving most of his fortune to a medical foundation, with some to be held in trust for his ward (Violet Wilson)’s education. Violet (played as a child by Stephanie Thwaites) excitedly watches through the bannisters with the sons of Marsh’s friends, Robert Siddaway (Simon Owen) and Peter Baker (Glen Mead), but is dismayed to hear that her guardian imagines that her future lies in marriage, possibly to one of her young companions. Marsh’s friend Phyllida Campion (Susan Tracy) remonstrates, but it is clear that Marsh has rather fixed views on the role of women.

Thus, the stage is set for an episode that alludes to, but doesn’t follow, Christie’s story. We have a rich man named Andrew Marsh, who made his money farming in Australia (as Christie’s character had done), a young (sort of) heir named Violet, and some eyebrow-raising at the idea of women’s education. However, we also have a gang of Siddaways and Bakers (the Bakers here are not quite the household servants of the same names from the short story), a Miss Campion and Dr Pritchard who are not found in the source text. And, most important, Marsh’s will is definitely not missing.

The episode then jumps ahead to the present day. The present day being 1936, of course. Poirot and Hastings are attending a Cambridge University debate in the company of Violet Wilson. (As a side note, the adult Violet is played by Beth Goddard, in the first of her two Poirot appearances. Her second appearance will be in Appointment with Death ¬– another rather loose adaptation of Christie’s work. But we’ll talk about that one later.)

The debate is on women’s education – and women’s rights generally. Marsh is speaking against, and Robert Siddaway (played as an adult by Edward Atterton) is speaking for. Robert makes an unsurprisingly prescient speech, arguing that – when the inevitable war in Europe comes – women will be expected to work in factories, munitions works, and even the armed forces. The guffawing idiots in the audience (clearly oblivious to the roles women played during the war that ended less that twenty years earlier) shout him down with derogatory comments about the W.I. Overcome with outrage at the sexist nonsense she’s hearing, Violet interjects and the meeting descends into boorish chaos.

Robert’s invocation of an upcoming war is interesting here. I’ve said several times in these posts that the TV series conjures up a world that is permanently on the brink of WWII, but never actually fighting it. This episode comes closer than many to accepting that a war will happen: Robert makes specific reference to an alliance between Hitler and Mussolini, and – unexpectedly – we actually see a young British man in army uniform, as the Bakers’ son Peter (now played by Neil Stuke) is home on leave for the duration of the episode.

All this is perfectly in-keeping with the rest of the series, but it just feels a little bit heavy-handed in these opening scenes. That probably doesn’t mean anything though. It’s not like Britain’s relationship with other European nations was a particularly hot topic in early 1993 or anything.

Picture Credit: TV Whirl

Anyway… as I’ve said above, Christie’s short story is simply a treasure hunt for our little Belgian detective. The TV episode has to add a few extra twists and turns to keep us away from Bamboozle. Those twists include… Andrew Marsh decides to change his will! Then he gets murdered! Japp turns up to investigate! And he recognizes shifty Dr Pritchard (Richard Durden)! The will goes missing! Hastings rides a horse! Dr Pritchard says he thinks Andrew has a secret son! Miss Campion gets pushed down a moving staircase! Poirot questions Margaret Baker (Gillian Hanna) about her son Peter! Sarah Siddaway (Rowena Cooper) hints that Robert in Marsh’s son! Miss Lemon investigates!

‘What’s going on? What on earth is happening?’

(Violet has obviously read Christie’s short story.)

Joking aside, the story plays out in a typically Poirot way. A man is murdered shortly after making a new will (which goes missing), and there is a small circle of suspects. A red herring is dismissed (Japp recognized Dr Pritchard from an earlier case), and a misunderstanding is revealed (Marsh’s comments about parenthood meant that he had a daughter, not a son). And in typical Christie fashion (though not actually written by Christie), the case hinges on the question of who has specific medical knowledge (were you listening carefully?).

I have kinda mixed feelings about the episode’s ending. On the one hand, I like that Watkinson brings us back to Christie’s short story at the end. It’s revealed that Violet is, in fact, Marsh’s daughter (her mother is Miss Campion). After the pesky business of the murder has been cleared up, Poirot assures Violet that Marsh wanted to change his will to leave everything to her: ‘As proof that she was his daughter!... And his equal.’ This is a nice echo of Poirot’s assertion in the short story that Violet has ‘proved the astuteness of her wits and the value of the higher education for women’. At least the TV version of Marsh saw the error of his assessment before he died.

On the other hand, the revelation that Violet is Marsh and Miss Campion’s daughter leaves a couple of question marks. Violet grows up believing that she is the daughter of Marsh’s late business partner in Australia. When this unnamed partner – and, presumably, his wife/girlfriend – died, Marsh benevolently assumed guardianship of the orphan and employed Australian Margaret Baker as a nanny. When Marsh moved back to England, he was ‘called away to fight in France’, and Margaret married a policeman (played by Jon Laurimore) and had Peter.

The problem is… this isn’t true. Violet was born in 1913 to Phyllida Campion, while the woman was a student at Cambridge. Her birth was registered in England. So how did the baby end up in Australia? (Presumably she did end up in Australia, as Margaret Baker gives no indication that the nanny story was a lie.) Did Miss Campion send her straight over? Did she go with her? What exactly was the relationship between Phyllida and Andrew? Did no one spot that Andrew made a quick jaunt to Cambridge from Australia in 1912, and then miraculously produced his dead business partner’s child nine months later? Did Andrew falsely register Violet’s birth in Australia – giving her the surname ‘Wilson’? Did no one question why a single man, with apparently no blood relationship to the child, was registering the birth of a baby at least two weeks old (and that’s assuming Miss Campion gave birth and then immediately shoved the baby on a boat), with the implausible claim that both the child’s parents had died. The more you look at it, the harder to swallow it seems.

Quick! Let’s distract ourselves with Hastings on a horse!

Despite my concern about Baby Violet’s ocean voyage, I still really like this episode. There are some great little details to enjoy. Hastings’s horse ride, for instance… This is the moment when our intrepid sidekick discovers Marsh’s body. As he rides across the countryside with Violet, he looks up and exclaims:

‘What a charming folly!’

This always makes me smile – follies are never good news in Agatha Christie stories.

But by far my favourite bit of the episode is the return of Miss Lemon’s investigative skills. Obviously, I enjoy seeing her peering over card catalogues and registers with her acute eye for the detail of a filing system. But I also like the fact that it is specifically Miss Lemon who spots a slip from the doctor – he refers to ‘Mrs Campion’, rather than ‘Miss Campion’ – and, from the way she questions this, it seems she guesses the reason for the slip before any of the men. For this reason, Poirot entrusts the task of hunting down Miss Campion’s records to her, leaving poor old Hastings kicking his heels on his own in the car park (at least he doesn’t have a strop this time).

And so, ‘The Case of the Missing Will’ might not follow Christie’s original story, but it’s still a great episode. Watkinson does a good job of riffing on Christie’s story to create a script that is convincing as an adaptation (for viewers unfamiliar with the original). There are just enough allusions to reassure fans of Christie’s stories that the writer had read the original as well.

Oh, and we get to see Poirot in his pyjamas again. I’m building up a collection of these pictures, because I have a theory that the detective’s bedtime attire gets distinctly fussier as the series progresses. As you can see, he is not wearing a hairnet or moustache protector in this episode. I doubt anyone apart from me cares.

Right, onto the next episode (and a real favourite of mine) – ‘The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman’




* Academic footnote ahoy! Just to say, I have the version of ‘Strange Jest’ that appears in the eBook edition of the Miss Marple and Mystery: The Complete Short Stories collection, published by HarperCollins in 2011 (2008).