Baking Cakes and Puddings – 1833 Style

For the past few months, I’ve been doing some research into the history of the Chorlton-on-Medlock area of South Manchester for a couple of organizations. I’m sure I’ll be writing up more about this research at a later date, but this post is about a little bit of fun my mum and I had with some of the stuff I’ve found.

Last month, we decided to follow some of the recipes in Betsy Westhead’s household book (from 1833).

Background

Betsy Westhead was born in 1805, the daughter of George Royle Chappell, fustian manufacturer. At the turn of the 19th century, Chappell owned land in Chorlton Row (later Chorlton-on-Medlock), on the newly created ‘Nelson Street’. The family lived in Nelson House (now the site of Grafton Street car park), and also owned a pair of semi-detached villas next door (now the Pankhurst Centre). Chappell had six daughters, and each of them married into neighbouring families – who, like them, were influential in local politics, the industrial explosion of Manchester, and the Methodist church.

In 1828, Betsy Chappell married Joshua Proctor Westhead, and the two of them lived in Chorlton-on-Medlock for a time. Joshua adopted the surname ‘Brown-Westhead’ and inherited Lea Castle in 1848. He was elected Liberal MP for Knaresborough in 1847, and was later MP for the City of York (1857-65, 1868-71). Betsy and Joshua has a daughter, Adelaide, who married John Constantine de Courcy, 22nd Lord Kingsale in 1855.

My own research has focused so far on George Royle Chappell and the property he owned in Chorlton-on-Medlock – but this has involved finding out more about Chappell’s ‘fine family of daughters’ (as they were described in one source). During the course of this research, I discovered that the University of Manchester has a small notebook belonging to Betsy Westhead (née Chappell) in its archives. Described as ‘Betsy Westhead’s Receipt Book’, this is a handwritten household book, started in 1833 and recording various household tips and recipes collected from other women of her acquaintance.

Betsy appears to have started this receipt book with the best of intentions, neatly writing out recipes and patterns and adding little comments (‘very nice cake’, ‘a cake made this way with dripping is beautiful for children’). But this only goes on for a few pages, sadly. Most of the notebook is blank. I don’t know if Betsy got bored or lost the notebook (it’s also possible that her daughter was born around this time, and so her attention was elsewhere). What remains is a brief little glimpse into a few months in the life of a woman from nineteenth-century Manchester.

Obviously, I couldn’t resist this… so my mum and I decided we’d try out some of the recipes. After ruling out the intriguingly name ‘Mrs Tootal’s Calves Foot Jelly’ (not the best recipe for a vegetarian), preserved cucumbers (not sure we’d have much need of these) and Rhubarb Wine (rhubarb… urgh), we settled on Almond Pudding and Corporation Cakes. And here’s how we got on…

Almond Pudding

This recipe looked pretty tasty, so we started here. First up, we mixed grated bread, suet and brown sugar together.

And… almost immediately, we realized that historical baking isn’t as straightforward as finding a recipe in an old book. I know nothing about what sort of bread, suet or sugar Betsy would have used, but since we just wanted to get a ‘flavour’ of these 1833 recipes, we decided to accept that there would be some anachronisms. So we used supermarket-bought soft brown sugar and grated up a stale white loaf. And we used shredded vegetable suet (because I’m vegetarian).

The next problem was the bitter almonds. I was tempted to try these, but I would’ve had to order them online (and they’re quite expensive). I also got a bit squeamish about all the warnings bitter almonds carry – they contain cyanide in raw form and as few as 10 nuts might be enough to kill an adult, and as a result they’re illegal in the US. As far as I can tell, cooking bitter almonds destroys the poison, but I chickened out (because I've read too much Agatha Christie) and decided to substitute sweet almonds instead.

We used ground almonds, mixed with a little rosewater. (Side note: I thought it’d be good if we pounded the almonds ourselves, but it turns out my mum hasn’t got a mortar and pestle. She used to have one – but apparently she got rid of it years ago, so we had to use pre-ground nuts instead.)

Betsy’s recipe didn’t give any instructions about the sweet almonds, so we decided to roughly chop them.

Next, we beat together 5 eggs and a glass of brandy. I don’t know whether we used the right size of glass (we used a small wine glass), but the mixture smelt right so that was good enough for us.

Then we mixed the wet and dry ingredients together, spooned the mixture into a pudding basin, and tied it up ready for boiling.

The pudding needed to be steamed for six hours (give or take), so into the pan it went.

After just over six hours, the pudding was cooked through (slightly springy to the touch) and ready to be turned out of the basin…

… strewed with white sugar…

… and served (we didn’t make the wine sauce, as Betsy didn’t provide a recipe for that.)

It was delicious. The texture was close, but not stodgy, and you could really taste the almonds and brandy. The only change I would make in future would be to reduce the amount of rosewater, as there was just a little too much rose in it. The rosewater is really only intended to take the edge off the bitterness of the almonds, so if you’re using sweet almonds you only need a drop or two. (I’m also wondering about substituting the brandy for amaretto, for the ultimate almond pudding.)

Corporation Cakes

The next recipe was a bit of a mystery. I’d never heard of corporation cakes before, and an internet search revealed very little. All I found was another recipe, in The Young Ladies’ Guide in the Art of Cookery (1777) by Elizabeth Marshall, but no information about the history or popularity of this type of cake. (As you can see, Elizabeth’s recipe differs from Betsy’s, as it has no yeast and the ratio of flour to sugar is different.)

Curious about corporation cakes, I asked people on Twitter if they could shed any light on the matter. I got some nice responses (and some advice) from food historians, but no one had actually heard of the cake before. Fortunately, I know a baker! The mum of one of the kids I tutor works for Park Cakes in Oldham, and I had a vague memory of her being knowledgeable about the history of baking. Sure enough, Ann-Marie turned out to have heard of corporation cakes – in fact, she recognized the name as soon as I said it – and she advised me that they’re a bit like rock cakes. (Sadly, she didn’t know anything about the history of the name – so I’m yet to discover why they’re called ‘corporation’ cakes.)

At least I now knew what the end product should look like… but there was a new problem. One of the historians I spoke to on Twitter, David Fouser, warned me that I’d have to think carefully about the type of yeast being used. Modern baker’s yeast didn’t exist in 1833, so I’d have to work out what sort of yeast Betsy was using before I could calculate the measurements for a modern substitute. With a bit of reading around the subject, I came to the conclusion that Betsy’s household would probably have used a homemade yeast (along the lines of a modern sourdough starter) or leftovers bought from a local brewer. My mum and I quickly decided that making a homemade yeast was out of the question (not least because we were both doing this on our only day off!) and it was unlikely that we’d find a local brewer willing to sell us some leftovers. Instead, I found a website to convert measurements of brewer’s yeast into modern baker’s yeast (dried) – though I had no idea how big Betsy’s ‘spoonsful’ were – and, working on the basis that we were making something along the lines of a rock cake, decided on using two teaspoons of dried yeast for 1lb of flour.

To this, we added the currants, sugar (anachronistic caster sugar, I’m afraid) and nutmeg.

We melted the butter over the fire – well, okay, in a pan on the cooker – and stirred in the egg white (without the homemade yeast, of course, as we’d added our dried yeast directly to the flour). Then we put the butter and egg to the flour mixture.

The mix was a little dry, and we couldn’t work it into a dough. This might have been because the yeast should’ve added some extra liquid to the mixture, so we compensated for this as best we could with a little warm milk. Eventually, the mix bound together into a dough.

Of course, I don’t know if this dough was right, as Betsy only told us to ‘lightly make it into little cakes’. Perhaps it was meant to be a sloppier than this… but without any evidence of what corporation cakes are supposed to look like, we just went with what we had. We made the mixture into small buns, and then ‘threw’ some powdered sugar onto them.

Betsy just told us to bake them in a ‘slow oven’, so, again, we had to just go with what seemed right. We decided to bake them at Gas Mark 4 ‘until they look right’ (in my mum’s very scientific language).

Ta da…

I was a bit disappointed, after all the research I did, to discover that the yeast was near enough pointless. The cakes didn’t rise at all, and we’re fairly convinced that we could have achieved the same result without the yeast. Maybe we should’ve added more, or maybe we should’ve avoided the preactivated dried stuff – or, given the fact that Elizabeth Marshall’s recipe didn’t include it, maybe the yeast was always pointless. I don’t know enough about the history of baking to say for sure. But never mind… onto the taste test…

The conclusion we reached (and which was agreed by my dad and my husband) is that Betsy Westhead’s Corporation Cakes (or, at least, our version of them) are amazing. They’re like the sweetest, butteriest rock cake you’ll ever taste. I think you could probably die from eating more than two of them in one sitting though, which is a problem because they’re really morish. The taste of nutmeg came through nicely as well. All in all, I think Betsy’s recipe might be a bit more decadent than Elizabeth Marshall’s, but that’s no bad thing.

(If you can shed any light on the history of ‘corporation cakes’, please do leave a comment!)

So that was our little foray into baking 1833-style. What have I learnt? That Mrs Tootal made a mean calves foot jelly, the people of Chorlton-on-Medlock had a sweet tooth, and puddings in the nineteenth century were a bit more cyanidey than modern ones.

My Social Media

I've been told this week that all my social media aliases are a bit difficult to keep track of. (Tell me about it.) So here's a little list of all my social media profiles and what they do.

Personal/Professional

For my academic, personal, political and personal-is-politcal posts, I have this blog, a Twitter account and an Academia.edu page. I don't have a personal Facebook profile, so if you think you've found me on there... it's just an illusion.

My husband Rob and I have an occasionally-updated travel blog called About Our Isles, and a (very quiet) Twitter account to go with it.

Creative

I write creatively as Hannah Kate, and I have a blog and Twitter devoted to my creative stuff.

Radio

My radio show, Hannah's Bookshelf, is on North Manchester FM on Saturdays. I blog about it here and tweet about it from my Hannah Kate Twitter. The show has a Facebook page, and a Mixcloud page.

Medieval Studies

I'm treasurer and webmaster for the Manchester Medieval Society, and run the society's blog and Twitter account.

Publishing

Rob and I run Hic Dragones, a dark fiction micropress. We have a website and an oft-neglected Tumblr. Hic Dragones is also on Facebook and Twitter.

We also publish a line of digitized Victorian penny dreadfuls, and these can be found on the Hic Dragones website. DigiDreadfuls has its own Facebook page and Twitter account.

Freelance

For all our freelance work (editing, indexing, web design and eBook conversion), we call ourselves Creative Cats and have a website, blog, Facebook and Twitter.

Avon

If you're in Manchester and would like to buy Avon cosmetics from me, you can find my online store here.

Community

I'm currently running the Twitter accounts for a couple of local community projects - the Friends of Crumpsall Park and the (new) Keep Crumpsall Clean campaign.

And that's it. If you find any other accounts that you think might be me, do let me know. Every so often one of my aliases goes feral and I have to track it down.

Call For Submissions: Into the Woods (anthology)

From magical places steeped in mysticism to evil foreboding places of unspeakable terror, the forest is a place of secrets, a place of knowledge, a place of death, and a place of life. But it is also a vulnerable place easily lost to the chainsaw and the drill. Our fascination with what may lie within the woods is an enduring one. Bewilder us, scare us, entertain us. Take us on a journey… into the woods.

What we want: Edgy, dark and weird fiction. Any interpretation of the theme is welcome – and we have no preconceptions about what ‘into the woods’ might mean. Any genre considered: dark fantasy, (sub)urban fantasy, Gothic, horror, sci fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, biopunk, dystopian, slipstream. We’re looking for original and fresh voices that challenge and unsettle. (And, please remember, we do not publish misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia or racism.)

Editor: Hannah Kate

Publisher: Hic Dragones

Word Count: 3000-7000

Submission Guidelines: Electronic submissions as .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments only. 12pt font, 1.5 or double spaced. Please ensure name, story title and email address are included on the attachment. Email submissions to Hic Dragones. Submissions are welcome from anywhere, but must be in English.

Submission Deadline: Monday 13th June 2016

Payment: Contributor copy: 1 copy of paperback, eBook in ePub and/or mobi format; permanent 25% discount on paperback (resale permitted); 1 free eBook from our catalogue.

More information: email or visit the Hic Dragones website.

Poirot Project: The Dream (review)

This post is part of my 2016 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 King of Clubs’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

We’ve reached the end of the first series! I’m woefully behind schedule, so am seriously doubting that I’ll get to Curtain by Christmas – but it’s been so much fun revisiting Series 1 that I don’t mind that this project is probably going to take a lot longer than I envisaged. And I get to end this series with a great episode.

The tenth episode of the first series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 19th March 1989, and was based on the short story of the same name (first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1937, then in The Strand in February of the following year).

The story begins with Poirot arriving at Northway House, the residence of Benedict Farley. Farley is an eccentric millionaire, who lives in a house that is a ‘relic of an earlier age – an age of space and leisure, when green fields had surrounded its well-bred arrogance’. The description of Northway House continues:

‘Now it was an anachronism, submerged and forgotten in the hectic sea of modern London, and not one man in fifty could have told you where it stood.’

This evocative description of the house prepares us for its reclusive inhabitant. Mr Farley is known for his odd habits and erratic behaviour, and his summons to Poirot is characteristically strange. When the detective is shown into Farley’s room (in fact, into his secretary’s room), he discovers that he has been called in to consult on a recurring nightmare – not the detective’s usual fare. Farley has been repeatedly dreaming about shooting himself – always at the same place and the same time. He has consulted three doctors, who have advised him (respectively) that the dream is caused by poor diet, childhood trauma and subconscious suicidal urges. Farley has dismissed all these explanations, and asks Poirot whether it is possible that a murder could be effected through such means. The detective is unable to do much more than rule out hypnotism, so Farley dismisses him.

Naturally, of course, Farley is soon found dead – apparently having committed suicide at the very place and time predicted in his dream. Poirot is called in by his old friend Dr Stillingfleet, as the police have discovered the letter Farley sent requesting a consultation with the detective. Stillingfleet explains that, without this letter, the death would have been recorded as a suicide, but Poirot’s involvement suggests the matter may be more complicated. Additionally, Mrs Farley is able to corroborate the story of the dream, and Farley’s secretary says that he wrote the letter to Poirot on his employer’s instruction.

Because Poirot (and Stillingfleet) are quick to rule out suicide, the reader does so too. This, then, is a murder, which took place in a locked room with no access via window, and which the victim apparently predicted in a series of recurring dreams. It’s a locked room mystery – and I do adore locked room mysteries. (Agatha Christie was no John Dickson Carr and used the ‘locked room’ conceit more sparingly in her stories – but I feel that her Poirot locked rooms do stand up against the acknowledged masters of the subgenre. ‘Problem at Sea’ has always been a favourite of mine, for instance.)

The clues to the trick (for locked room mysteries always rely on a ‘trick’) are to be found in Poirot’s odd meeting with Benedict Farley – the bright lighting of the room, the man’s inability to distinguish between his letter and a letter to Poirot’s laundress, his refusal to let Poirot see the room which is to be the scene of the crime. Some details of the crime scene also help – a pair of ‘lazy-tongs’, the blank wall that faces Farley’s window, the traffic noise from the street below. The detective puts these seemingly random details into a comprehensible order, and the solution is a satisfying one. It’s worth noting, by the way, that there is yet another reference to stage magic in the story: in response to Poirot denying any deception on his part, Benedict Farley chuckles, ‘That’s what the conjuror says before he takes the goldfish out of the hat! Saying that is part of the trick, you know!’

[Update: I wrote the above last night, but then I had a bit of a realization after I slept on it. I seem to remember that I worked out the solution of ‘The Dream’ when I first watched it. And I was only ten at the time. This possibly means that the ‘trick’ isn’t particularly sophisticated, or that it’s easy to spot its workings. However, ‘The Dream’ will always have a special place in my heart for this reason, as it’s the locked mystery I cut my teeth on.]

The TV adaptation was written by Clive Exton and directed by Edward Bennett. As is usual with Exton’s adaptations, it’s fairly faithful to Christie’s short story. Like many of the other earlier episodes, the ‘family’ are added to the story – Miss Lemon, Hastings and Japp aren’t in Christie’s story – but their inclusion is a little less clunky than in some other episodes. Miss Lemon has a little sub-storyline about a broken typewriter, and Japp neatly replaces Inspector Barnett, the ‘tame police inspector’ of the short story. The inclusion of Hastings necessarily downgrades Dr Stillingfleet (played by Paul Lacoux) from his role as the ‘Watson’ character, but I guess that’s a sacrifice that has to be made.

The TV version of Farley is fairly close to his literary counterpart. However, the eccentric is now the owner of a successful pie factory, rather than being something vaguely connected to transport. Unlike in Christie’s story, we get more of a sense of Farley at work – a Pathé Gazette newsreel introduces us to Farley’s Pies, and we see the owner addressing his workforce on the factory’s fiftieth anniversary. This Benedict Farley is a more straightforwardly obnoxious man. Christie’s short story mentions the millionaire’s ‘strange meanesses’, but also his ‘incredible generosities’; it is only the ‘meanesses’ (his attempts to block unionization, his dismissal of his daughter’s boyfriend) that are on show in the adaptation. But we still get no real sense of the man outside a few glimpses and reports from others, which is very much in-keeping with the original story.

Like ‘The Incredible Theft’ and ‘The King of Clubs’, the episode features some fantastic location shots. In this case, it’s the use of the Hoover Building in Perivale, which doubles as Farley’s factory. Like the other iconic buildings used in these early episodes, the art deco Hoover Building is both dramatically stylized and contemporary to the show’s setting (it was built in 1933). Unlike the other buildings, though, it’s now a branch of Tesco.

Weirdly, given that I really like both the episode and the short story, I find that I have a lot less to say about ‘The Dream’ than some other instalments. It’s just a neat little puzzle that was faithfully adapted for the screen. There are some nice interactions between Poirot and Miss Lemon (particularly the detective’s enthusiasm after Miss Lemon’s strange time-keeping leads him to his solution, and his final (misguided) thank you gift). And I like Poirot’s lamenting that his little grey cells have been ‘weakened by the old age and the fast living’ (which Hastings questions, but is informed that Poirot did indeed live fast in his youth). The episode sees the welcome (well, welcome to me) return of Dicker (played by George Little), the concierge of Whitehaven Mansions, who is the show’s most minor recurring character.



Since it’s the final episode of the series, it’s only fitting that we have one last chase scene as well. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, the (silly) chase scenes are a regular feature of the early series, taking place on foot, by car and by boat. In ‘The Dream’, we round off the series with a motorbike-and-sidecar heading in hot pursuit of the murderer – complete with a dramatic leap from the driving seat to apprehend the fugitive.

And that brings me to the end of the first series – making me ten episodes closer to finally watching Curtain. It seems sort of fitting to end this review with a quote from Christie’s ‘The Dream’, I think:

‘“I wonder if you’ll ever commit a crime, Poirot?” said Stillingfleet. “I bet you could get away with it all right. As a matter of fact, it would be too easy for you – I mean the thing would be off as definitely too unsporting.” “That,” said Poirot, “is a typical English idea.”’

Onwards, then, to Series 2…

POSTSCRIPT:

As I said, I adore locked room mysteries. To hear more about some of my favourite examples of the genre (including a couple of Agatha Christie’s mysteries), have a listen to the radio show I did on this subject last year:

Poirot Project: The King of Clubs (review)

This post is part of my 2016 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 Incredible Theft’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The penultimate episode of Series 1 of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 12th March 1989. It was based on the short story of the same name, first published as ‘The Adventure of the King of Clubs’ in The Sketch (March 1923).

Like all of the original Sketch stories, the story is narrated by Hastings, and it begins with the good captain attempting to interest his illustrious companion with an odd story in a daily newspaper. An ‘impresario’ by the name of Henry Reedburn has been murdered, and his death was announced in a strangely dramatic fashion. The previous night, as a ‘neat suburban’ family (the Oglanders) played bridge in their drawing-room, a woman in burst through their French windows and shouted, ‘Murder!’ The woman’s evening dress was stained with blood, and she fainted after her sinister proclamation.

At this point in the story, Poirot decides to put Hastings out of his misery and admits that he knows all about the Oglanders’ surprise visitor. The woman is Valerie Saintclair, ‘the famous dancer who has lately taken London by storm’, and Poirot has been contacted by Prince Paul of Maurania about the case – the prince, it seems, has recently become engaged to Valerie, and is keen to banish any trace of suspicion of the woman’s involvement in Reedburn’s murder. The prince explains that, while he knows that his family won’t officially sanction his marriage to a dancer (despite the fact that she is allegedly the daughter of ‘a Russian grand duchess’), he is free to enter into a morganatic marriage – provided the woman isn’t accused of murder, that is.

Poirot and Hastings take on the case and travel to Mon Désir, Reedburn’s ‘exceptionally fine villa’, and then to Daisymead, the ‘unpretentious little house’ of the murdered man’s neighbours, questioning the various characters as they go. Valerie Saintclair admits to being at Reedburn’s house at the time of the murder, but she insists that the impresario was attacked by ‘a dreadful-looking man, a sort of tramp’. Terrified, she escaped through the window and ran to the first house she saw. As the case proceeds, the detective discovers that Valerie has previously consulted a psychic, who warned her to beware ‘the King of Clubs’ – the assumption was that this referred to Reedburn, though the phrase takes on a different meaning as Poirot’s investigation progresses.

I like Christie’s short story. It’s not my favourite of the 1923 Sketch series, but it’s an enjoyable puzzle nonetheless. It’s got some nice subtle clues, especially when Poirot draws attention to seemingly irrelevant details (particularly an old photograph) that turn out to be vital. And the mildly incongruous aspects of the crime scene (and that of Valerie’s dramatic entrance) lead neatly to a satisfactory conclusion.

And now… the adaptation. The TV episode was directed by Renny Rye, and dramatized by Michael Baker (with Clive Exton as script consultant). Sadly, it’s not a high spot of the series. It’s not the loosest adaptation of the series (it’s positively faithful compared to some of the others), but some of the narrative changes that have been made here dilute the original mystery until the central puzzle is all but lost. In fact, despite having seen the episode a couple of times, it was only when I read the short story that I understood what the puzzle actually was.

In the adaptation, Valerie Saintclair is no longer a dancer, but is a famous film actress (played by Niamh Cusack, the first of the Cusack sisters to appear in the show). She is shooting a film at Parade Studios, which is owned by the arrogant and aggressive Henry Reedburn (David Swift). The episode opens with Valerie attempting to shoot a scene, as Reedburn boorishly hectors and demeans the cast and crew. Poirot and Hastings are witnesses to this scene, as they have been invited along by Hastings’s old friend, Bunny Saunders (played by Jonathan Coy), the film’s director. Also present is Prince Paul of Maurania (Jack Klaff), Valerie’s fiancé. As in the short story, Poirot is acquainted with the prince – His Highness thanks the detective for ‘all you have done for my family’.

After this opening, we are taken to Mon Désir, Reedburn’s grand residence – where the studio head is being confronted by two of his disgruntled stars. Although I don’t know a huge amount about the locations used in the series, I do know that the exteriors of Reedburn’s house were filmed at High and Over in Amersham, a Grade II* listed building designed in 1929 by Amyas Connell. Occasionally, particularly in the early series, locations are used that almost seem unreal. There’s something about ‘Mon Désir’ that seems too modernist, too stylized, too Poirot to be real – so it’s good to pause occasionally and look at the buildings. As Hastings says at the beginning of Christie’s short story: ‘Truth […] is stranger than fiction!’

Back to the episode, I have some serious reservations about the changes made to Valerie Saintclair’s character. Cusack performs her as a reserved and genteel actress, beloved by the dashing Prince Paul and popular with both viewers and colleagues. Gone is any trace of the ‘scandalous’ nature of Valerie’s profession in the short story, and there is no hint that the Mauranian royal family will be anything other than welcoming of their new daughter-in-law (there are definite echoes of Grace Kelly’s marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco in the relationship). The only potential obstacle is that Valerie may be implicated in Reedburn’s death, which Paul is keen to avoid.

While there’s nothing wrong with these changes per se, making Valerie more respectable has the effect of lessening the social divide between her and the Oglanders. In the episode, Valerie’s appearance in the ‘neat suburban’ sitting room of the Oglanders lacks all the wild incongruity of Christie’s short story. This is what confused me the first couple of times I watched it – there’s just no sense that she shouldn’t be there. There’s no sense of discomfort between Valerie and Mrs Oglander (played by Avril Elgar), or any animosity between Valerie and Geraldine (Abigail Cruttenden). The Oglanders’ son Ronnie (played by Sean Pertwee, in his first of two appearances in the series – he’ll be back in Dead Man’s Folly, though who knows when I’ll finally get to that episode!) is nothing but solicitous towards Valerie, and there’s a sense of the family protecting the famous actress from the moment Poirot arrives at The Willows (the new name for Daisymead). I must confess that, until I read the short story, I always assumed Valerie was a friend of the family, possibly a relation. And so I could never understand why Poirot questioned why the actress has arrived at The Willows in the first place. It just seemed obvious that she’d gone to their house deliberately.

In Christie’s short story, the reveal that Valerie is the Oglanders’ daughter, and that the family is protecting their own (despite being estranged), is explained by Poirot with characteristic elegance:

‘The interesting thing is that Valerie is ashamed of her family, and her family is ashamed of her. Nevertheless, in a moment of peril, she turned to her brother for help, and when things went wrong, they all hung together in a remarkable way. Family strength is a marvellous thing.’

This is lost in the adaptation, as there’s no sense of estrangement in the Oglander family. Their secrecy turns out to be down to the fact that Oglander isn’t their real name – they are, in fact, the Hawtreys, and they’re living incognito (Valerie included) because the silent and disabled pater familias once committed a serious act of fraud. The problem is that this sense of a shared secret pervades all their interactions, which, again, removes any sense of Valerie’s outsider status.

The change in Valerie’s profession necessitates a change in Reedburn’s. The nightclub impresario now becomes a film studio executive: thus he is no longer the ‘king of clubs’. As such, Valerie’s reported trip to the clairvoyant is removed – the connection between the playing card and the man would be much harder to explain in this version of the story. While the mention of the psychic in Christie’s story seems fluffy and inconsequential, it serves the purpose of hinting at something premeditated or preordained about Reedburn’s death – and this is an important piece of misdirection, as the reader is being discouraged from seeing the impresario’s death as the spur-of-the-moment act of violence it is ultimately revealed to be.

The adaptation has no such misdirection, and so Reedburn’s death always appears as an accident committed in the heat of an argument. In order to create some sense of mystery, additional suspects in the form of Bunny Saunders and the recently sacked Ralph Walton (Gawn Grainger) are thrown into the mix. Valerie’s mysterious tramp from the short story is transformed into a gypsy and, as in the source, Poirot disdains the task of hunting for this phantom. As an aside, one of my favourite lines in the short story comes when Hastings suggests they look for the vagrant, and his friend formidably proclaims: ‘Hercule Poirot does not hunt down tramps’.

But someone has to hunt down tramps or vagrants, and the TV version knows just the man: Inspector Japp is on the case. ‘Dear oh dear… here we go again,’ the policeman says as he arrives at Daisymead and prepares to undertake a pointless search of the local gypsy camp. The little Belgian detective is more than happy to let his friend head off on a wild goose chase, and the episode ends with Japp still convinced he will find the shadowy Romany. (As is the case with Hastings, some Japp storylines feel a bit like they’ve just been added for the sake of it.)

There is one significant element of the original story that has been retained in the adaptation. The Oglanders have been playing bridge, but Poirot discovers that a single playing (the eponymous ‘King of Clubs’) is missing from the card table. Bridge has become something of a recurring motif in the second half of this series, featuring significantly in the previous two episodes. Here, however, the game isn’t simply used as a metaphor or for character development, but it’s an important clue to the mystery (this idea will be used again in Cards on the Table).

The missing playing card is still a good clue in the TV episode – in fact, it’s one of the only good clues – but the identity of the missing card has been divested of any (phony) significance. Yes – the missing card is still the king of clubs, but the clue would have worked with any card from the pack. (Naturally, this makes the title of the episode seem a little odd until you’ve read the short story.)

To conclude, then, this isn’t a favourite episode. Like ‘The Incredible Theft’ it lacks both the punch and the charm of other episodes in the series. Even the interactions between the ‘gang’ seem watered down – Miss Lemon is absent, and Japp is at a loose end – though I do enjoy Hastings’s attempt to explain modern art to Poirot when they arrive at Mon Désir.

One final comment… it’s always interesting to compare Suchet’s performance and appearance in these early episodes to that of the later series. Sometimes, the superficial details can be quite telling. For instance, when Prince Paul calls Poirot to tell him about Reedburn’s murder, we see our detective disturbed in his slumber. As in other early episodes, he’s wearing pyjamas, but no hair or moustache net. It’s worth keeping this image in mind when we get to later episodes (e.g. Murder on the Orient Express) – it seems the little Belgian is to get more fastidious with age… he almost looks like a man of action here.

Okay, so ‘The King of Clubs’ isn’t a huge favourite of mine, though the short story is enjoyable. On to the final episode of Series 1 – ‘The Dream’ – which is a very different kettle of fish.

Poirot Project: The Incredible Theft (review)

This post is part of my 2016 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 ‘Problem at Sea’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The eighth episode of the first series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 26th February 1989. It was based on the short story of the same name, which was first published in 1937. That story was, in turn, a revision and expansion of ‘The Submarine Plans’, which was first published in The Sketch in November 1923. ‘The Submarine Plans’ isn’t included in The Complete Short Stories, but it’s in Poirot’s Early Cases (Collins, 1974) and, since I don’t own a copy of that collection – and I hadn’t previously read the 1923 story – I’d like to say a big thanks to Sorcha Ní Fhlaínn for lending me a copy so I could compare the texts. It’s always nice when your friends understand your obsessive completism.

Like all of the ‘original’ run of Poirot stories that appeared in The Sketch, ‘The Submarine Plans’ is narrated by Hastings. It begins rather abruptly – ‘A note had arrived by special messenger’ – with Poirot being summoned to Sharples, the country house of Ralph Curtis, Lord Alloway. Alloway is the head of the ‘newly formed Ministry of Defence’, and is responsible for the ‘new Z type submarine’, the plans for which appear to have been stolen from Sharples. Poirot has been called in as police involvement would risk a scandal, and because Alloway remembers ‘only too well what you did for us during the war, when the Prime Minister was kidnapped in that astounding fashion’.

A collection of guests at Sharples make up the cast of suspects. Admiral Sir Harry Weardale, his wife and son (Leonard) are among them, as is Mrs Conrad (‘a lady well known in London society’). Alloway’s secretary, Mr Fitzroy, appears to have been the last person to see the plans, and Mrs Conrad’s French maid caused a disturbance shortly before the theft which, she claimed, was the result of her seeing a ghost on the stairs. Poirot cuts through all this nonsense to reveal a bait-and-switch plot designed to trap (or, as it turns out, trick) Mrs Conrad, who has dubious connections to foreign powers. Despite having set up the whole affair, Lord Alloway is revealed to be a patriotic hero, who goes on to become Prime Minister.

I’m afraid to say, ‘The Submarine Plans’ is not a particularly memorable short story. For me, the only notable feature is the excellent bit of snark at the end of Hastings’s narration. After Poirot sums up his findings with his characteristic arrogance – he announces to his companion that he ‘spoke to Alloway as one great man to another – and he understood perfectly’ – Hastings accuses his illustrious friend of simply guessing at the explanation. A short epilogue follows, in which it is revealed that the Z type submarine was a huge success and Lord Alloway acknowledged his gratitude to Poirot after becoming Prime Minister, and Hastings again asserts his scepticism about Poirot’s deductive powers: ‘But I still consider that Poirot was guessing. He will do it once too often one of these days.’

‘The Incredible Theft’ is a fairly straightforward expansion of the 1923 story, with little additional plot added (though, as in Christie’s ‘Murder in the Mews’, Hastings has now been removed). The character names are changed: Lord Alloway becomes Sir Charles McLaughlin, Lord Mayfield; Harry Weardale becomes Air Marshal Sir George Carrington, his wife is now named (Julia) and his son is called Reggie rather than Leonard; Mr Fitzroy becomes Mr Carlile. Mrs Conrad is now an American woman named Mrs Vanderlyn, and more emphasis is placed on the woman’s dubious connections, and an additional guest – Mrs Macatta MP, ‘a great authority on Housing and Infant Welfare’ – is included.

Perhaps as a result of the different context of the stories, Christie also makes further changes to the details of the plot. The original story was written five years after the end of WWI, and the military implications of the submarine and Alloway’s career are barely mentioned. ‘The Incredible Theft’ was published two years before the outbreak of WWII (and just months before the Sudetan Crisis), and so the implications of the stolen plans seem more serious. In ‘The Incredible Theft’, Mayfield has been created ‘first Minister of Armaments, a new ministry which had only just come into being’, and the plans are for a bomber, rather than a submarine. As such, Carrington is Air Marshal Sir George Carrington, head of the Air Force (his counterpart, Weardale, was an admiral in the Navy).

Hints of impending conflict pepper the later story, though these are kept rather vague. In discussing the bomber, Carrington notes that Britain has fallen behind other nations in engineering a new plane:

‘Lots of gunpowder everywhere all over Europe. And we weren’t ready, damn it!’

Mayfield counters this by saying:

‘A lot of the European stuff is out of date already – and they’re perilously near bankruptcy.’

Note that Christie sticks to the generic ‘European’, and offers no specifics about which countries might be ‘near bankruptcy’. This vagueness continues in the comments about Mrs Vanderlyn’s suspicious connections. The men talk of her association with foreign nations, but give no actual details: ‘We will just say to a European power – and perhaps to more than one European power.’ Even the past scandal in Lord Mayfield’s career isn’t specified:

‘You were suspected of friendship with a European Power at that time bitterly unpopular with the electorate of this country.’

Nevertheless, the story ends with a less subtle nod towards contemporaneous events. Like Lord Alloway before him, Lord Mayfield is tipped to become the next Prime Minister. But, unlike the earlier character’s dignified discretion, Mayfield concludes his business with Poirot with more self-assertion:

‘You are much too clever, M. Poirot. I will only ask you to believe one thing. I have faith in myself. I believe that I am the man to guide England through the days of crisis that I see coming. If I did not honestly believe that I am needed by my country to steer the ship of state, I would not have done what I have done – made the best of both worlds – saved myself from disaster by a clever trick.’

Modern readers can see, of course, just how prescient Mayfield’s ‘days of crisis’ speech really was.

The TV adaptation was directed by Edward Bennett, and dramatized by David Reid and Clive Exton. Again, as with ‘Murder in the Mews’, Hastings is returned to the story, along with Chief Inspector Japp and Miss Lemon (neither of whom appeared in either version of the short story).

Miss Lemon has little to do in this episode, sadly – aside from bearing the brunt of some full-on Poirot sarcasm when she refuses to take an anonymous call: ‘Life first, Miss Lemon. Filing second.’ Hastings is also at a bit of a loose end. His presence in ‘The Submarine Plans’ was as the (admittedly somewhat cynical) narrator, and so there’s not much space for him in ‘The Incredible Theft’. This is literally true, as Hastings isn’t able to stay at Mayfield’s house with Poirot. He has to stay in an overcrowded pub in the village instead and, as the pub’s rooms are all booked, this results in his sharing a room (and a bed!) with Inspector Japp. This does lead to one of the funniest bits of the episode, as Hastings glumly explains to Poirot that Japp talks in his sleep. Apparently Hastings has been kept awake all night by shouts of ‘Now I’ve got you, young sonny me lad’, ‘Japp of the Yard strikes again!’, and (my favourite) ‘Stand back, lads, he’s got a blancmange!’

While Hastings and Miss Lemon get through the episode by just sort of being Hastings and Miss Lemon, the presence of Inspector Japp is a bit more of a problem. As I said, in both versions of the short story, Poirot is called in precisely to avoid any police involvement. In order to be able to include Japp, some aspects of the plot have had to be revised.

In this version of the story, then, Lord Mayfield becomes Tommy Mayfield (played by John Stride), an engineer who is struggling to rebuild his relationship with the British government after a scandal (‘that Japanese business’). As such, he isn’t being completely trusted with his plans for a new aircraft. Sir George Carrington (John Carson) is in attendance as a representative of the government, and he has called on Japp to be stationed nearby (without informing Mayfield of this) in case something happens to the secret documents. Carrington is staying at Mayfield’s home with his wife (played by Phyllida Law, in her first of two appearances in the series) and son Reggie (Guy Scantlebury), who appear as exaggerated versions of their literary counterparts (though, unlike in the short stories, poor Reggie doesn’t get his snog with a French maid in the TV episode).

Although the literary Lord Mayfield was unmarried, Tommy Mayfield has a wife who is becoming increasingly concerned about her husband’s involvement with Mrs Vanderlyn. It is Mrs Mayfield (Ciaran Madden) who contacts Poirot – before the theft of the plans – and requests that he visits them at their home. This additional plot element does result in a lovely little sequence shot on location at London Zoo (perhaps one of the most iconic locations used in the first series). Mrs Mayfield – posing, initially, as Miss Smith (Miss Lemon’s anonymous caller) – meets Poirot by the zoo’s famous Penguin Pool. Now a Grade I listed building (and no longer inhabited by penguins), this structure was designed by Berthold Lubetkin’s Tecton Architectural Group and opened in 1934. I’m a bit torn by its use here: on the one hand, there seems absolutely no reason for Mrs Mayfield to insist on an incognito meeting at London Zoo; on the other, the Penguin Pool is an absolutely perfect addition to the show’s early aesthetic.

Sleeptalking Japp and Penguin Pool aside, the TV episode turns out to unfortunately be as lacklustre as its source. Mrs Macatta MP and the French maid are dropped – which is a shame, as I liked the little ‘after all, what is a kiss?’ exchange between Poirot and the maid, which appears in both versions of the short story – in favour of more emphasis on the impending war in Europe. As I said in my review of ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, Agatha Christie’s Poirot sets almost all its episodes in the years just prior to WWII, and this episode draws attention to this context directly throughout. Characters engage in discussions about the military situation in Europe – specifically the role of the League of Nations and the possibility of using ‘radio echoes’ to track aircraft – and Mrs Mayfield states that her husband believes Britain is ‘on the brink of war’. In this version, there is no prevarication as to the enemy either. Mayfield jovially proclaims that Hitler and Mussolini need to be ‘taken down a peg or two’, and the newly designed aeroplane (named the ‘Mayfield Kestrel’) is compared favourably to the Messerschmitt.

Most striking of all is the alteration to Mrs Vanderlyn’s character. The TV Mrs Vanderlyn (played by Carmen Du Sautoy) is far removed from Mrs Conrad of ‘The Submarine Plans’ – though her role in the narrative remains the same.

In the 1937 short story, Mrs Vanderlyn is unobtrusively American: ‘Her voice held a soupçon of American accent, just enough to be pleasant without undue exaggeration.’ By contrast, the TV character is all about ‘undue exaggeration’. Her Americanness is stated repeatedly, and she comments on the Britishness of her surroundings several times. Moreover, her dubious associations are now explicitly ‘pro-German sympathies’. In case this hasn’t been made obvious enough, Mrs Vanderlyn hot-foots it to the German ambassador’s house as soon as she has the (phony) plans in her possession (chased – of course – by Poirot and Hastings in a stolen police car). And as a final cherry on the cake, she performs a Nazi salute on her arrival. A far cry from the nebulous threat of Mrs Conrad in the 1923 short story.

All in all, the TV episode is a solid, but not particularly exciting, adaptation of a solid, but not particularly exciting, short story. If I had to choose, I’d say that ‘The Submarine Plans’ is my favourite of the three versions, if only because of Hastings’s narration.

We watched this episode as part of a little set of Series 1 episodes: ‘Problem at Sea’, ‘The Incredible Theft’, ‘The King of Clubs’ and ‘The Dream’. Watching/reading these stories back-to-back highlights a couple of recurrent motifs that will pop up at various point of the series as a whole.

Firstly, a game of bridge is featured, and this game is used to illuminate character. As I mentioned in my review, bridge features prominently in ‘Problem at Sea’ – and it will also be of importance in the next episode, ‘The King of Clubs’, and in later episodes as well. Bridge is a clear marker of class, and immediately evokes the world in which Poirot and Hastings circulate. It’s also an apt metaphor for the work of the golden age detective, I suppose.

An even more potent metaphor is that of the conjuror. Conjuring crops up in ‘Problem at Sea’, though the conjuring trick itself is a piece of misdirection. Although stage magic isn’t mentioned in the TV version of ‘The Incredible Theft’, there’s a nice little comment in the 1937 short story. When Lord Mayfield suggests calling in Hercule Poirot, Carrington is sceptical: ‘[he’ll] come down here and produce the plans like a conjuror taking rabbits out of his hat, I suppose?’ This isn’t the first time Poirot has been likened to a magician – and it won’t be the last.

As a fan of both golden age detective fiction and conjuring, I’m always happy when stories draw attention to the close relationship between the two. (I love Clayton Rawson’s Great Merlini stories for this, and some episodes of Jonathan Creek.) With his debonair dramatics and theatrical flair (as well as his taste for misdirection and production), Poirot is the classic conjuror-detective, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of this as the series goes on.

But it’s time to move on now… the next episode is ‘The King of Clubs’

Poirot Project: Problem at Sea (review)

This post is part of my 2016 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 ‘Triangle at Rhodes’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The seventh episode of the first series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 19th February 1989. It was based on the short story of the same name, which was first published in This Week in January 1936. The story was first published in the UK in The Strand in February 1936, under the title ‘Poirot and the Crime in Cabin 66’.

Thanks to Liam Adler for providing this image.

The short story is set during a cruise around Egypt, and begins with Miss Ellie Henderson in conversation with General Forbes. As Miss Henderson gently probes the general for information about a fellow guest – Colonel Clapperton – we become aware that another traveller is present: Hercule Poirot. So, once again, we find Poirot enjoying a bit of female company on his holidays – this theme is going to come up several more times, by the way.

Ellie’s interest in Colonel Clapperton has been inspired by his seemingly mismatched marriage. The colonel is a pleasant, quietly spoken man; his wife is a domineering woman, disliked by all the other occupants of the boat. General Forbes is the only person who voices any criticism of the poor browbeaten husband – but this is presented as old-fashioned snobbishness. The general is disdainful of the fact that Clapperton was once a music hall performer; he believes the man is socially beneath his wife (the former Lady Carrington). Nevertheless, the general’s blustery haughtiness is the only voice of dissent – Colonel Clapperton is liked (even loved) by everyone else.

When the boat arrives at Alexandria, two cheeky young women (Kitty Mooney and Pamela Cregan) attempt to lure Colonel Clapperton off the boat for a day of fun. In front of a small audience, the henpecked Clapperton asks his wife’s permission and is angrily dismissed through a locked door. However, he quickly gets over his embarrassment and joins his female friends for the trip.

Clapperton returns from the trip and discovers… shock! horror!… his obnoxious wife has been murdered! The only clue is a string of beads found on the floor of Mrs Clapperton’s cabin, implicating a local vendor. Poirot, of course, isn’t fooled.

I love this short story. In fact, I love it so much that I sort of ‘borrowed’ the solution for a murder mystery game I wrote for Hic Dragones. This means that I know from experience how hard a trick it is to pull off. One whiff of ventriloquism and the whole things falls to pieces. I handled this by slipping in a reference to a ‘vent act’ when no one was paying attention; Christie did it by never actually saying what Clapperton did on stage, allowing the other characters (and the readers) to jump to the wrong conclusion. The ‘wrong conclusion’ here is that Clapperton was a conjuror – an error that Clapperton perpetuates by performing card tricks. Even Poirot is briefly fooled, noting that the ‘conjuror had shown himself through the mask of the pukka sahib’. (I’m going to come back to the idea of the conjuror in another blog post.)

Another reason why I like ‘Problem at Sea’ is the character of Ellie Henderson. According to the Wikipedia page for the series (hmmm…), the TV programme often made changes to ‘present female characters in a more sympathetic or heroic light, at odds with Christie’s characteristic gender neutrality’. Though this might be true for some major characters in the later feature-length episodes, it obscures some of the fascinating minor characters in the short stories, who are often written with subtle depth and sympathy. Ellie Henderson is one such character – a beautifully tragic woman, whose initial good humour belies an aching loneliness. The most poignant example of this is when Clapperton leaves the boat with Kitty and Pam. Miss Henderson watches the three disembark, and is asked by Poirot whether she will also be going ashore. The detective notes that Miss Henderson is wearing a sun hat and smart clothes, but she quietly insists that she was planning to stay on board. Poirot, naturally, is too much of a gentleman to question this.

The TV adaptation was written by Clive Exton and directed by Renny Rye. As with most of Exton’s other scripts, it stays close to its source material, and so given how much I love the short story the episode is one of my favourites (one of my many favourites). If I had to say what stuck with me the most after I first watched it (and remember, I was only ten at the time), it would undoubtedly be the bonkers denouement – and more on that shortly.

As with most of the episodes in the first series, the biggest change comes with the insertion of characters who weren’t in the original story. Hastings is now accompanying Poirot on his cruise, and is strangely wrapped up in organizing a clay pigeon tournament. While this little subplot is rather silly, it does nothing to distract from or alter the main mystery. It’s a classic ‘give Hastings something to do’ plot, of which there are several in the early series. The TV adaptation also adds a few other passengers to the cruise: the Morgan sisters and their young niece (played by Dorothea Phillips, Sheri Shepstone and Louisa Janes), and the Tollivers (played by Geoffrey Beevers and Caroline John).

Additionally, there are a few changes to characterization, though, again, this doesn’t deviate too dramatically from the source story. Colonel Clapperton (John Normington) is a little less reserved than his literary counterpart. In Christie’s story, Clapperton is a ‘distinguished grey-haired’ gentleman who is difficult to reconcile with ‘with a red-nosed comedian singing mirth-provoking songs’. In the TV episode, it is much easier to imagine Clapperton on the stage, even before his mask ostensibly slips during the card trick.

Mrs Clapperton (played by Sheila Allen) is also slightly different. In the short story, Christie describes the woman thus:

‘Mrs Clapperton, her carefully waved platinum head protected with a net, her massaged and dieted form dressed in a smart sports suit, came through the door from the bar with the purposeful air of a woman who has always been able to pay top price for anything she needed.’

This is followed up with a wonderfully cutting statement:

‘From the distance she had looked a possible twenty-eight. Now, in spite of her exquisitely made-up face, her delicately plucked eyebrows, she looked not her actual forty-nine years, but a possible fifty-five.’

Despite this, I must admit to feeling a bit of sympathy for Christie’s Adeline Clapperton. Colonel Clapperton is a bit of an arse, to be honest. He spends half the cruise openly flirting with two girls young enough to be his daughters, and the rest batting his eyelids at Miss Henderson. He refuses to play bridge with his wife, meaning that, unless there’s a single person present, she’ll be unable to play. I’ve always felt that Clapperton seems to be deliberately trying to humiliate his wife (before bumping her off). So I’m just going to say it: Mrs Clapperton has funded her husband’s entire lifestyle since he came out of the army and – do you know what? – she’s absolutely right to point out that the car she paid for isn’t actually his car.

Perhaps because of this, the TV episode exaggerates Mrs Clapperton’s ‘odious’ nature, making it easier for viewers to sympathize with her husband (though not me, I’m afraid). Adeline’s appearance is no longer deceptive – she is clearly a woman in her late forties/early fifties – but her vanity is retained (even heightened). We first see her gazing into a mirror, plucking her eyebrows (in a nod to the description in Christie’s story). As she plucks and preens, she sings ‘Stay as Sweet as You Are’ (by Harry Revel and Mack Gordon), which is not only an awfully vain song to sing to oneself, but also an incongruously modern song (it was first performed in 1934) for an older woman to croon. (Now, I’m not going to go on about this too much, but I can’t help but feel that Adeline’s desperate attempts at ‘youth’ here could maybe, just maybe, have something to do with the fact that her husband makes no secret of his infatuation with two eighteen-year-olds. ‘Stay as Sweet as You Are’ is a song usually sung by a man to a woman – Adeline singing it to herself is rather sad.)

Interestingly, although Exton’s Mrs Clapperton is more dramatically ‘odious’, this is tempered by a slight expansion of General Forbes’s character (played by Roger Hume). As in the short story, it is the general who questions Clapperton’s military record and reveals his music hall past. However, in the adaptation, Forbes is more clearly fond of Mrs Clapperton (who he calls ‘Adeline’), and there are definite hints of unrequited affection here.

But, as in the short story, any glimpses of Adeline’s softer side are overshadowed by the presentation of Miss Henderson – Colonel Clapperton’s other victim. Played by Ann Firbank, the TV Miss Henderson captures the dignified sadness of Christie’s character perfectly. In a slight change to the story, Miss Henderson (in her sun hat and smart clothes) does go ashore at Alexandria; however, when she runs into Poirot, she says that she thought she would be part of Colonel Clapperton’s party (i.e. the arse has stood her up). Poirot, with careful tact, prevaricates on the subject, before admitting that Clapperton came ashore with ‘the two little girls’. Miss Henderson sighs and says, ‘They’re not children, Monsieur Poirot.’ And then adds, ‘Nor am I.’

Oh! Miss Henderson – I love you.

Of course, during all this, Hastings hasn’t had much to do. The clay pigeon storyline has been flogged to death – and it’s never really clear (either to the viewers or, indeed, to Poirot) why Hastings is taking it so seriously. Time for a change of pace… Cut to: Hastings posing for a photo on a wooden camel.

As I said above, when I first watched this episode it was the denouement that really stuck in my mind. And it is an absolute cracker. Unlike many of the other early episodes, there’s no chase scene, but there is a truly grand gather-the-suspects reveal, which allows David Suchet to revel in Poirot’s taste for the dramatic. The thing is though… for once, the TV denouement is actually less crazy than that of the short story.

In the adaptation, the passengers are enjoying a bit of post-prandial, post-homicidal entertainment. Mr Russell (the old man known only by the disrespectful nickname ‘the Grandfather of All the Tea Planters’ in the short story, here played by James Ottaway) is reciting a bit of Kipling, when he is interrupted by the ship’s captain (Ben Aris). Poirot is to have centre-stage, and he arrives dramatically carrying a suitcase under a cloth. He whips the cloth away, revealing a suitcase. After working his audience for a short time, he opens the suitcase and produces a doll. This doll, he says (with pure showmanship), can speak – but only if no one is looking. He places her back inside the suitcase, and an eerie voice begins to recite the words Mrs Clapperton ostensibly spoke through her bedroom door on the morning of the murder. The ventriloquism is revealed, and all eyes are on Colonel Clapperton.

Now, much as this might seem like an embellishment written for the TV episode (along the lines of the theatrical capture of George Lorrimer in ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’), it’s actually taken from Christie’s short story. However, Christie’s version is – believe it or not – even stranger. In the source text, the passengers find handwritten notes by their dinner plates, instructing them to go to the lounge at 8.30. There, the captain stands on the orchestra stage and announces Poirot as though he were the evening’s star turn. The little Belgian detective arrives with a bulky object covered with a sheet – he removes the sheet to reveal ‘an almost life-sized wooden doll, dressed in a velvet suit and lace collar’. Poirot then performs what appears to be a ventriloquist act (though the doll’s voice is actually provided by a stewardess concealed behind the stage) and implicates Clapperton.

Erm… where did Poirot get this almost life-sized wooden doll? In the TV adaptation, his prop is clearly explained: we see Poirot approaching the Misses Morgan’s niece, who we have previously seen playing with dolls, and requesting ‘a favour’. But at no point in Christie’s story do we see anyone playing with a large wooden mannequin – meaning Poirot fortuitously discovered that there was an almost life-sized doll just kicking around on the boat waiting to be put into action. Or he went out and bought a ventriloquist’s dummy (from one of the many ventriloquism emporia at Alexandria harbour, no doubt) for the sole purpose of giving a murderer a heart attack.

That’s right, did I forget to mention? Poirot’s little show gives Colonel Clapperton a fatal heart attack. And Poirot did this intentionally. As he explains to Miss Henderson, he’d found a prescription for digitalin in the Clappertons’ cabin, and he deduced it belonged to the colonel. Unlike in the TV version, where Poirot’s performance is intended to provoke a confession, in the short story the detective is trying to literally scare the man to death. Come on, Poirot, I know he was an arse, but isn’t that a bit too far?*

And as if this wasn’t enough weirdness, let’s not forget that Poirot puts on a special voice to do his little show. I don’t mean the dummy’s voice (that’s done by the hidden stewardess), but rather Poirot’s own voice changes when he talks to the doll: ‘it was no longer foreign – it had instead a confident English, a slightly Cockney inflection’. WTF? Why does he do that?? (As with the bizarre disguised-as-an-Irishman subplot in ‘The Third Floor Flat’, I can sort of see why Exton chose to drop this bit from his adaptation. It just raises too many questions.)

But there’s one final little flourish in Poirot’s Cockney ventriloquism routine that is absolutely golden. When he presents his ‘witness’ to the crime, he gives the doll a name. The dummy, apparently, is named ‘Arthur’. As in, Arthur Hastings (who doesn’t actually appear in the short story). I’ve mentioned my love of Hastings’s snark in reviews of previous episodes, but it’s just lovely to see Poirot take a light-hearted swipe at his companion here. It’s this sort of thing that really differentiates Poirot and Hastings from Holmes and Watson.

Okay, I’ve gone on too long about this episode now – and there are lots more to go before I get to Curtain. It’s just that this really is a fantastic adaptation of a great short story, and I love talking about it. Two final little gems before I finish…

Although we’ve had a glimpse of Poirot’s moustache-care kit, this is the first episode in which we get to see a really classy Poirot travel accessory. In this case, it’s his walking stick telescope. Nice.

And, while the dialogue is pitch-perfect throughout, the story has one standout exchange between Poirot and Mrs Clapperton (retained verbatim from the short story):

‘“‘You’re so alive, Adeline,’ they say to me. But really, Monsieur Poirot, what would one be if one wasn’t alive?”
“Dead,” said Poirot.’

Can’t argue with that. Next up: ‘The Incredible Theft’


*Actually, Poirot’s causing Colonel Clapperton’s heart attack isn’t quite as sinister as it might sound. Most of the Poirot stories were written before the abolition of the death penalty in the UK, and Christie’s detective frequently offers murderers a way to ‘avoid the rope’ – if he feels some sympathy towards them, that is. Moreover, Poirot is sometimes reluctant to let British killers face foreign courts (as we’ll see in Death on the Nile), which may have been the case had Clapperton lived. Nevertheless, ‘avoiding the rope’ is more commonly achieved by a discreet dose of poison or the concealing of a gun – this is the only story in which it’s effected through a ventriloquism-induced heart attack.

Call for Submissions: Nothing (anthology)

Bleak landscapes, empty hearts, insignificant lives, dystopian futures, extinction, limbo, uncertainty, death. A beautiful void or a horrific state of being. The simple complexity of nothingness.

Submissions wanted for a new anthology of short stories based on the theme of nothing.

What we want: Edgy, dark and weird fiction. Any interpretation of the theme is welcome – and we have no preconceptions about what ‘nothing’ might mean. Any genre considered: dark fantasy, urban fantasy, Gothic, horror, sci fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, biopunk, dystopian, slipstream. We’re looking for original and fresh voices that challenge and unsettle. (And, please remember, we do not publish misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia or racism.)

Editor: Hannah Kate

Publisher: Hic Dragones

Word Count: 3000-7000

Submission Guidelines: Electronic submissions as .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments only. 12pt font, 1.5 or double spaced. Please ensure name, story title and email address are included on the attachment. Email submissions to Hic Dragones. Submissions are welcome from anywhere, but must be in English.

Submission Deadline: Monday 5th September 2016

Payment: Contributor copy (1 copy of paperback plus eBook in ePub and/or mobi format); permanent 25% discount on paperback (resale permitted); 1 free eBook from our catalogue.

For more information: email or visit the Hic Dragones website