Poirot Project: The Lost Mine (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 Veiled Lady’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The fourth episode of the second series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 21st January 1990. It was directed by Edward Bennett and written by Michael Baker and David Renwick. The episode was based on the short story of the same name, which was first published in The Sketch in 1923.

The short story is possibly the weakest of the original Sketch stories – it feels a lot like Agatha Christie was just phoning this one in. In attempt to assert the moral/intellectual high ground, Poirot criticizes Hastings for making speculative investments, and derides his friend’s advice to speculate in the ‘Porcupine oil-fields’ (foreshadowing the ‘doubtful oil fields’ mentioned in Peril at End House). Poirot explains that the only shares he owns are in the Burma Mines Ltd., and they were the reward for his services in a case of theft and murder:

‘You would like to hear the story? Yes?’

The rest of the story is made up of Poirot narrating this past exploit to Hastings. And it’s not the most exciting past exploit.

Poirot was called upon by Mr Pearson, one of the directors of ‘an important company’, to solve the murder of a Chinese man named Wu Ling, who was killed shortly after arriving in England with papers relating to a valuable ‘lost’ mine in Burma. Pearson had intended to meet Wu Ling at Southampton, but found his visitor had already disembarked from his ship and travelled to London before he got there. The following day, Wu Ling’s body was found in the Thames, and the papers were nowhere to be found.

There’s a bit of back-and-forth as Poirot carries out his investigation, with a ‘broken-down European named Dyer’ and a ‘young bank clerk named Charles Lester’ falling under suspicion. Eventually, Poirot and Pearson travel to Limehouse, ‘right in the heart of Chinatown’, visit an opium den, and Poirot reveals Pearson was behind the murder all along. He whips the papers out of Pearson’s pocket, explains the truth of the mystery to the police, and is given shares by the company as a reward. The story ends with Poirot using this as a lesson to Hastings not to invest in companies, lest their directors turn out to be ‘so many Mr Pearsons’.

There aren’t many notable features to the short story, except an appearance by Inspector Miller (who crops up in a few other Christie texts). Miller is like the anti-Japp: Poirot thinks he’s ‘obstinate and imbecile’, and the policeman vehemently distrusts the little egg-shaped Belgian. When Poirot explains to Hastings that he had to work with Miller, he says the policeman is ‘a man altogether different from our friend Japp, conceited, ill-mannered and quite insufferable’. While this sets us up for a somewhat antagonistic associate in this story, it also reveals how much affection Poirot has for Japp, which is rather sweet.

The story also has Poirot going undercover in an opium den, which I feel might be another jokey nod to Sherlock Holmes and ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’. In Doyle’s story, Holmes has been gathering information in an opium den, disguised as an old man. In Christie’s story, Poirot also enters an opium den, but disdains Pearson’s suggestion that they adopt a disguise (which would involve Poirot shaving off his moustache):

‘I pointed out to him that that was an idea ridiculous and absurd. One destroys not a thing of beauty wantonly. Besides, shall not a Belgian gentleman with a moustache desire to see life and smoke opium just as readily as one without a moustache?’

Aside from this, though, there isn’t much going on in the short story, and it’s not very memorable.

And now… the adaptation. Hmmm… I think I’ll split this into The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

The Good

Like the short story, the episode begins with Poirot and Hastings just hanging out, talking about financial matters. However, in the TV version, the financial matters they are discussing are part of a mammoth game of Monopoly that is being played throughout the episode.

Obviously, this is enjoyable simply for the rapport between our two leading men. Hastings appears to be teaching Poirot how to play, and the Belgian detective disdains the game as one of mere chance – until he starts to win, that is. But there’s another reason why I like this detail – it’s another subtle little reference to the series’ setting. Monopoly was first licensed in the UK in 1935, so Hastings is actually introducing his friend to the ‘latest craze’.

The question of whether or not to speculate on the stock exchange is retained, but in the adaptation it is Miss Lemon, rather than Poirot, who is the recipient of Hastings’s advice. It seems Miss Lemon is quite a keen speculator, and is buying and selling shares with some success. It’s quite nice to see this side of Miss Lemon, and it’s good to know her quick brain is used for more than just maintaining Poirot’s files.

There’s also a nice Christie-esque clue added to the episode, which wasn’t present in the original story. As Poirot and Hastings are now on hand to investigate Wu Ling’s possessions (conducting a search that wasn’t included in the source), Poirot is able to discover an anomalous box of matches that makes for rather a nice puzzle.

Oh… and continuing my love affair with Poirot’s accessories, he shows off a natty smoking/playing Monopoly jacket in this episode.

Aside from these details – and the reappearance of Inspector Jameson (played by John Cording), who previously appeared in ‘Murder in the Mews’ (and is an even more minor recurring character than Dicker) – there isn’t much more ‘good’ to talk about. The writers had a rather dull story to contend with, and their reasonably faithful adaptation results in a rather dull episode, to be honest.

The Bad

Added to this, the only good bits of the original story are removed! Inspector Miller is absent, so Poirot doesn’t get chance to make his comparison with Japp. Poirot’s incognito trip to the opium den is also altered, replaced by a co-ordinated police raid on a premises in Limehouse. In my opinion, this is no more engaging than the source material – in fact, it feels a lot like padding.

The Ugly

Christie’s short story – like Doyle’s ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ – is set in a very particular version of Limehouse. It’s the Chinatown of Thomas Burke’s Limehouse Nights, Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories, and WWI Sinophobia. It’s a world of opium dens, gambling and murder.

Of course, Christie subverts the expectation of the ‘evil’ lurking in Limehouse. While Wu Ling was indeed murdered by Chinese men, these killers were merely acting at the behest of the true villain – the respectable (and English) Mr Pearson. As I said in my review of ‘Peril at End House’ though, this subversion of expectations isn’t necessarily being used to interrogate racist stereotypes, but rather to reinforce them: Pearson is the last person you’d suspect because he’s so English, the Chinese characters are much more obvious suspects because… well… they’re Chinese.

Now, this racist stereotyping of the inhabitants of Chinatown as murderous villains was actually criticized in the ‘rules’ of Golden Age detective fiction, and Christie’s bait-and-switch of revealing Pearson to be the true villain reflects an edict by one of her contemporaries (and colleagues). When Ronald Knox, one of the founding members (along with Christie) of the Detection Club, wrote his Detective Story Decalogue in 1929, his fifth rule stated: ‘No Chinaman must figure in the story.’ The reason for this interdiction has often been misinterpreted, but Knox made his thinking very clear. The ‘sinister Chinaman’ belonged in the realm of the thriller (like Sax Rohmer’s work, for instance), not the whodunit – using this figure is a lazy way to resolve a well-crafted puzzle. As Knox goes on to say:

‘Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a reason for it in our western habit of assuming that the Celestial [Chinese person] is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals. I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention of “the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo”, you had best put it down at once; it is bad.’

While she does set her story in Chinatown, Christie sails just the right side of Knox’s prohibition: it is the Englishman who is ‘over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals’, and there are no ‘Chin Loo’-type characters stalking the pages…

… but that’s not true of the adaptation.

In padding out the story with a number of forays into Limehouse, the episode necessarily introduces more individuated Chinese characters than were present in Christie’s short story – and these are all handled badly. In particular, the only named character aside from Wu Ling – Chow Feng (played by Hi Ching) – is very much of the ‘Chin Loo’ school of characterization. The owner of the Red Dragon club is sinister, effete and criminal – he might not have been behind the murder, but he’s certainly guilty of something.

But at least this character gets a name! The only other Chinese characters listed in the credits – and, remember, the ‘Wu Ling’ we see on screen isn’t really Wu Ling, so doesn’t get listed – are ‘Chinaman’, ‘Restaurant Manager’, ‘Oriental Gentleman’ and ‘Chinese Tart’. To make matters worse, one of these characters – ‘Restaurant Manager’ (played by Ozzie Yue) – is given a name (Mr Ho) in the episode, but this doesn’t seem important enough to add to the credits.

Ozzie Yue as Mr Ho, Hi Ching as Chow Feng, Susan Leong as ‘Chinese Tart’

It does break my heart to heap such criticism on a show I love, but sadly this episode (from 1990) actually heightens the problematic ‘Yellow Peril’ undercurrent of the short story (published in 1923), and it doesn’t seem appropriate to gloss over this – no matter how much I love the show.

To end, I will just add that the Limehouse sequences do allow for one (more positive) addition to the story. We get to see a hint of what Japp does when he’s not helping Poirot solves genteel whodunits. As in ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’, Japp introduces Poirot and Hastings to an aspect of modern policing. In the first series, it was a forensics lab; in this episode, it’s a state-of-the-art radio control room, complete with a dynamic map to be used in co-ordinating surveillance and raids.

Cool as this room is, we’re returned to ‘Yellow Peril’ territory quite quickly, as it’s revealed that Japp is using this resource to co-ordinate his investigations into the activities of ‘the Tongs’, a Chinese crime organization. Indeed, Japp is barely interested in the lost mine; he is completely focused on bringing down the crime syndicate, and his interrogation of Mr Ho and Reggie Dyer (played by James Saxon) are to this end, rather than to assist in Poirot’s case. The two investigations come together at the Red Dragon Club, as Japp believes it’s a hub of organized crime and Poirot believes it’s the scene of Wu Ling’s murder. (It’s both.)

Ultimately, despite his state-of-the-art control room, and an investigation that’s lasted seven years, Japp fails to nab a single Tong. All that time and effort has been for nothing, and Japp almost looks dejected as all he gets to do is arrest another of Poirot’s English murderers. He walks away with the slumped shoulders of a man who’s just realized that, while he might be an admirable associate to a Golden Age detective, he’ll never be the hero who roots out the corruption at the heart of Limehouse.

Forget it, Japp. It’s Chinatown.

And now for something completely different… the next episode is ‘The Cornish Mystery’.

Poirot Project: The Veiled Lady (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 'Peril at End House'.

Beware: Here be Spoilers (including a Sherlock Holmes one this time)

The third episode of the second series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 14th January 1990. It was written by Clive Exton and directed by Edward Bennett. The episode was based on the short story ‘The Case of the Veiled Lady’, which was first published in The Sketch in 1923.

‘The Case of the Veiled Lady’ is one of the original Sketch short stories and so it’s narrated by Hastings. It begins with a bored Poirot bemoaning his lack of cases and claiming that, because he’s so famous, London’s criminal classes have curtailed their activities. He refers to a recent newspaper report of a jewel theft, which he claims is ‘not badly imagined’ (but ‘not in [his] line’). What happens next is a frequent occurrence in the early Poirot stories: Hastings reads some newspaper headlines out loud. This happens a lot. It happens in ‘The Adventure of the Clapham Cook’, for instance, and in Christie’s version of ‘The King of Clubs’. In Peril at End House, Hastings describes this activity as his ‘perusal of the morning news’, and this seems like a nice name for the trope. Here, as in every other insistence, Hastings’s Perusal of the Morning News includes a seemingly trivial detail that will turn out to be important and, we find out, Poirot was listening to every word, despite appearing to ignore his friend.

The two men are interrupted in their chit-chat by a visitor – a ‘heavily veiled lady’ (a description which Poirot places in inverted commas, noting the way this woman ‘mounts the steps’, ‘rings the bell’ and ‘comes to consult us’). I’ve often wondered how deliberately this is meant to evoke the opening of Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Speckled Band’* – in Doyle’s story, Helen Stoner is described as being ‘heavily veiled’, so I wonder if Poirot is specifically quoting the Sherlock Holmes story in his description.

The woman in the veil reveals herself to be Lady Millicent Castle Vaughan, the Duke of Southshire’s new fiancée. Millicent is being blackmailed by a ne’er-do-well named Lavington, and she needs Poirot’s help to retrieve a compromising letter. On hearing this story, Poirot (apparently) switches into full avuncular mode: ‘Have faith in Papa Poirot. I will find a way.’

Poirot is then visited by a man who calls himself Lavington, who ‘accidentally’ lets slip that he will shortly be leaving for Paris. Naturally, Poirot decides to burgle the man’s house while he’s out of the country, and is able to retrieve the Chinese puzzle box in which the letter is stowed. All is not what it seems, however, and his final confrontation with ‘Millicent’ reveals that Poirot isn’t the mug she took him for.

The episode is a pretty faithful adaptation of the short story. ‘Millicent’ is played by Frances Barber (her first of two appearances in the series), and she’s pretty convincing as both Millicent and Gertie. When she’s finally caught by Japp, the TV Gertie utters a similar ‘Nabbed!’ line to that of the short story, and does indeed look at Poirot ‘with almost affectionate awe’ when she realizes the game is up.

As in other episodes, Miss Lemon is added to the story – though sadly Pauline Moran doesn’t have a lot to do here aside from looking like she’s going to lamp ‘Lavington’ (Terence Harvey) when he calls to see her employer. Japp does appear in the short story, but his role is expanded in the TV adaptation – and he gets a wonderful final line (more on that shortly).

The beginning of the story is moved to a picturesque lake, where Poirot, Hastings and Japp are just chilling out, watching kids sail toy boats. Poirot, again, bemoans the lack of good cases, and Japp tells him about the jewellery theft. Hastings does his Perusal of the Morning News later in the episode, in between the meetings with ‘Millicent’ and ‘Lavington’. Millicent’s entrance into Poirot’s flat is removed, with the woman requesting a meeting at her hotel instead, though the content of their conversation remains the same. (The Athena Hotel in this episode is being played beautifully by Senate House, University of London.)

However, while much of the plot and dialogue is retained from the short story, there are two very memorable changes made. Firstly, the TV episode expands the brief description of Poirot’s burglary into a comic set-piece. In the story, Poirot and Hastings set out ‘just on midnight’ to enter Lavington’s house. Hastings has dressed in ‘a dark suit, and a soft dark hat’, which Poirot finds amusing: ‘You have dressed the part, I see’. They are able to open the window sash with ease, and Poirot confesses that earlier that day he went to the house, convinced the housekeeper that he was there to fit ‘burglar-proof fastenings’, and sawed through the catch. This little exchange has some comic elements – not least that Poirot gained entrance by using an ‘official’ card from Japp, but never explains how he came by this card (I like to imagine that he swiped a pile of them at some point, just in case).

The TV episode takes this little vignette and runs with it with a quite adorable little sequence (at least, I think it’s adorable – maybe not everyone will agree). After ‘Lavington’ leaves the flat, Hastings realizes that Poirot has a sneaky plan. Cut to: Poirot disguised as a Swiss locksmith, tootling through Wimbledon on a bike as a jaunty version of Gunning’s theme tune plays.

Poirot is such a method actor, he’s even dewaxed his moustache for the part. (When my husband Rob saw that for the first time, he said, ‘Oh no! Look at his moustache! That must be killing him.’) He presents himself to the suspicious housekeeper Mrs Godber (Carole Hayman), who doesn’t understand his talk of mountains and cantons: ‘You’re never Chinese!’

Poirot and Hastings return that night – both dressed for the part this time – and search Lavington’s house. They discover the Chinese box (which disappoints Hastings, as you ‘can buy them for tuppence in Limehouse’ – a little nod to the setting of the next episode), but before they can take another step… the police show up. The TV Mrs Godber is cannier than her literary counterpart; she knew Poirot was lying and so set a trap for him. Hastings panics and – wildly – throws himself out the window. Poor Poirot is taken down the nick.

I like Poirot’s disguise, but I like Japp’s arrival at Wimbledon police station even more. Alerted by Hastings, he’s come to get his friend out of trouble – but not before he’s had a bit of fun at Poirot’s expense. Looking through the window on Poirot’s cell, Japp tells the desk sergeant (Tony Stephens) that he’s been after this ‘vicious looking character’ for a while: ‘Nobody knows his real name. But everyone calls him Mad Dog.’ Poirot angrily exclaims, ‘This is not funny, Japp.’ But Japp, and the viewer, has to disagree.

The second major change in the story comes at the end. In ‘The Case of the Veiled Lady’, Poirot confronts ‘Millicent’ in his own flat. After revealing the stowed jewels in the puzzle box’s second compartment, Poirot says that Japp will be able to confirm that they are the jewels stolen in the Bond Street robbery. And as if by magic, ‘Japp himself stepped out from Poirot’s bedroom’. The policeman reveals the woman’s true identity, and Poirot reveals that he’d suspected her all along, because ‘the shoes were wrong’.

In the adaptation, the final meeting is switched to the second dramatic location of the episode – London’s Natural History Museum. Poirot meets ‘Millicent’, reveals the jewels, but they are joined by ‘Lavington’ (real name Joey Wetherley) who tries to take the jewels back and make his getaway. This leads to a classic Poirot chase scene around various museum galleries, before the two wrong ’uns are finally nabbed.

While it is lovely to see the Natural History Museum here – and I particularly like the museum cat who gives away Gertie and Joey’s hiding place – there is a stonking anachronism in this episode. Funnily enough, the programme probably got away with this for years, but events in 2015 mean that it’s a bit more obvious now. When Poirot and Hastings arrive at the museum, there, standing in the Grand Foyer in all his glory, is Dippy the Diplodocus.

But as anyone who paid attention to the 2015 ‘Save Dippy’ campaign will undoubtedly know, Dippy was only moved to the Grand Foyer in 1979. Prior to that, the foyer was home to African elephants and a series of display cases – check out the second photo in the slideshow on this page to see what the foyer should have looked like.

This is a bit of a shame, really, as the museum was only ‘window dressing’ after all. I suspect this was a simple mistake on the part of the programme-makers, as they’re quite careful with historical detail elsewhere in the series.

Diplodocus notwithstanding, this is a very enjoyable episode. It’s a close adaptation of the short story, with the nice punchline that criminals are so in awe of Poirot, they’re actually hiring him themselves. Frances Barber puts in a really fantastic performance, and the scenes with Japp, Hastings and Poirot are as charming as ever.

So I’ll end with a couple of ‘miscellaneous gems’…

Interestingly, there are two points at which this episode contradicts details found in Christie’s Peril at End House. In the 1932 novel, Poirot definitively tells Japp: ‘I do not disguise myself, Japp. Never have I disguised myself.’ (Of course, this in itself contradicts a detail from the 1929 short story ‘The Third Floor Flat’, in which Poirot appears to have disguised himself as an Irishman named O’Connor.) Also in Peril at End House, Poirot suggests that Hastings’s patriotic pride in the feats of Michael Seton ‘consoles for the defeats at Wimbledon’ (in 1932, there’d been no British winners of the Gentleman’s Singles for twenty-two years) – in the TV version of ‘The Veiled Lady’, Mrs Godber notes that there’s been more crime in Wimbledon since ‘they started the tennis up the road’, and that it’s ‘been beyond all since that Fred Perry won again this year’. I assume her comments about the tennis starting ‘up the road’ refers to when the All England Club venue moved to Church Road in 1922 (Mrs Godber definitely looks old enough to make this comparison), but her mention of Fred Perry sets the story in 1935 – Perry won Wimbledon in ’34, ’35 and ’36, and Mrs Godber seems to be referring to his second victory. It makes sense, then, that Exton dropped the ‘defeats at Wimbledon’ line from his version of ‘Peril at End House’, as this wouldn’t make sense given that the series is set at the peak of Perry’s success. What I like here is the subtle intertextuality that only makes sense if you’ve read Christie’s texts: not only does Exton remove the now-anachronistic Wimbledon line in ‘Peril at End House’, he cheekily explains why he took it out in the next episode. Quite clever, really.

The episode ends with Poirot, Hastings and Japp back at the boating lake – only this time Hastings has a giant model boat to play with. As Poirot and Japp condescendingly watch their friend compete with the children’s boats, they share a beautiful little exchange that gives an insight into Japp’s more romantic side (which Christie hinted at the ‘The Market Basing Mystery’):

‘Did you ever think to go to sea, Poirot?’
‘No, no, my friend. This is as close as I like to get.’ [Fibber!]
‘I used to dream about the sea.’

Awww… Japp!

Next up… ‘The Lost Mine’.


* Much as I love the Sherlock Holmes stories – and have an abiding love of the Granada adaptations starring Jeremy Brett (not as deep as my love for Suchet’s Poirot, of course) – ‘The Speckled Band’ always makes me angry. There are three reasons for this: (1) You can’t train a snake. (2) Julia Stoner lived surrounded by exotic animals – she would’ve recognized a snake when she saw it. (3) You can’t train a snake.