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.