Editing Hercule Poirot (section)

== Life ==
[[File:2011-07-26 Belgique - Ellezelles - Hercule Poirot 002.jpg|thumb|A statuette of Poirot in [[Ellezelles]], [[Belgium]]]]

===Origins===
Christie was purposely vague about Poirot's origins, as he is thought to be an elderly man even in the early novels. In ''An Autobiography,'' she admitted that she already imagined him to be an old man in 1920. At the time, however, she did not know that she would write works featuring him for decades to come.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Christie |first=Agatha |title=An Autobiography |date=2017-05-04 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-731466-9 |publication-date=2017-05-04}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Havlíčková |first=Andrea |date=2008-11-10 |title=Agatha Christie and her Great Detective (based on Poirot Investigates and Hercule Poirot's Christmas, reflecting 1920s and 1930s) |url=https://is.muni.cz/th/74475/ff_b/?lang=en;zoomy_is=1 |website=Masaryk University Information System |publication-place=Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno}}</ref>

A brief passage in ''The Big Four'' provides original information about Poirot's birth or at least childhood in or near the town of [[Spa, Belgium]]: "But we did not go into Spa itself. We left the main road and wound into the leafy fastnesses of the hills, till we reached a little hamlet and an isolated white villa high on the hillside."{{sfn|Christie|2004b|loc=Chapter 16}} Christie strongly implies that this "quiet retreat in the [[Ardennes]]"{{sfn|Christie|2004b|loc=Chapter 17}} near Spa is the location of the Poirot family home.
 
An alternative tradition holds that Poirot was born in the village of [[Ellezelles]] (province of Hainaut, Belgium).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://magazine.bellesdemeures.com/en/luxury/lifestyle/province-hainaut-village-ellezelles-adopts-detective-hercule-poirot-article-27759.html|title=In the province of Hainaut, the village of Ellezelles adopts detective Hercule Poirot|website=Belles Demeures|date=10 September 2018 |language=en-gb|access-date=17 December 2018}}</ref> A few memorials dedicated to Hercule Poirot can be seen in the centre of this village. There appears to be no reference to this in Christie's writings, but the town of Ellezelles cherishes a copy of Poirot's birth certificate in a local memorial 'attesting' Poirot's birth, naming his father and mother as Jules-Louis Poirot and Godelieve Poirot.

Christie wrote that Poirot is a Catholic by birth,<ref>,!-- "Hercule Poirot was a Catholic by birth."--> {{harvnb|Christie|1947a}}</ref> but not much is described about his later religious convictions, except sporadic references to his "going to church" and occasional invocations of ''"le bon Dieu"''.{{efn|In ''[[Taken at the Flood]]'', Book II, Chapter 6 Poirot goes into the church to pray and happens across a suspect with whom he briefly discusses ideas of sin and confession.<ref>{{harvnb|Christie|1948}}</ref>}} Christie provides little information regarding Poirot's childhood, only mentioning in ''Three Act Tragedy'' that he comes from a large family with little wealth, and has at least one younger sister. Apart from French and English, Poirot is also fluent in German.<ref>{{harvnb|Christie|2011|loc=Chapter 12}}</ref>

=== Policeman ===

<blockquote>Gustave ... was not a policeman. I have dealt with policemen all my life and I ''know''. He could pass as a detective to an outsider but not to a man who was a policeman himself.

: — Hercule Poirot, "The Erymanthian Boar"<ref> {{harvnb|Christie|1947c}}</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2024}}</blockquote>

Hercule Poirot was active in the [[Brussels]] police force by 1893.{{sfn|Christie|2009b|loc=Chapter 15}} Very little mention is made about this part of his life, but in "[[The Labours of Hercules#The Nemean Lion|The Nemean Lion]]" (1939) Poirot refers to a Belgian case of his in which "a wealthy soap manufacturer ... poisoned his wife in order to be free to marry his secretary".<ref>{{Citation |title=Collins, William Janson, (born 10 June 1929), Chairman, William Collins Sons & Co. (Holdings) Ltd, 1976–81 |date=2007-12-01 |work=Who's Who |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.11568 |access-date=2024-12-11 |publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.11568 }}</ref> As Poirot was often misleading about his past to gain information, the truthfulness of that statement is unknown; it does, however, scare off a would-be wife-killer.

In the short story [[Poirot's Early Cases#"The Chocolate Box"|"The Chocolate Box"]] (1923), Poirot reveals to [[Captain Arthur Hastings]] an account of what he considers to be his only failure. Poirot admits that he has failed to solve a crime "innumerable" times:

<blockquote>I have been called in too late. Very often another, working towards the same goal, has arrived there first. Twice I have been struck down with illness just as I was on the point of success.<ref>{{Citation |title=Collins, William Janson, (born 10 June 1929), Chairman, William Collins Sons & Co. (Holdings) Ltd, 1976–81 |date=2007-12-01 |work=Who's Who |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.11568 |access-date=2024-12-11 |publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.11568 }}</ref></blockquote>

Nevertheless, he regards the 1893 case in "The Chocolate Box",{{efn|The date is given in 1932 ''Peril at End House''<ref>{{harvnb|Christie|2009b|loc=Chapter 15}}</ref>}} as his only failure through his fault only.

Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth. During his police career, Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof into the public below.{{sfn|Christie|1975|loc=Postscript}} In ''[[Lord Edgware Dies]]'', Poirot reveals that he learned to read writing upside down during his police career.{{cn|date=February 2024}} Around that time he met Xavier Bouc, director of the [[Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits]].

Inspector Japp offers some insight into Poirot's career with the Belgian police when introducing him to a colleague:
<blockquote>You've heard me speak of Mr Poirot? It was in 1904 he and I worked together – the Abercrombie forgery case – you remember he was run down in Brussels. Ah, those were the days Moosier. Then, do you remember "Baron" Altara? There was a pretty rogue for you! He eluded the clutches of half the police in Europe. But we nailed him in Antwerp – thanks to Mr. Poirot here.{{sfn|Christie|1939|loc=Chapter 7}}</blockquote>

In "The Double Clue", Poirot mentions that he was Chief of Police of Brussels, until "the Great War" (World War I) forced him to leave for England.{{cn|date=February 2024}}

=== Private detective ===

<blockquote>I had called in at my friend Poirot's rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot. {{sfn|Christie|2013b}}</blockquote>

During World War I, Poirot [[Belgian refugees in Britain during the First World War|left Belgium for England as a refugee]], although he returned a few times. On 16 July 1916 he again met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published, ''The Mysterious Affair at Styles''. It is clear that Hastings and Poirot are already friends when they meet in Chapter 2 of the novel, as Hastings tells Cynthia that he has not seen him for "some years". ''Agatha Christie's Poirot'' has Hastings reveal that they met on a shooting case where Hastings was a suspect.{{efn|name="KidnapPM"}}

Particulars such as the date of 1916 for the case and that Hastings had met Poirot in Belgium, are given in ''Curtain'', Chapter 1.  After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service and undertook cases for the British government, including foiling the attempted abduction of the [[Prime Minister of Britain|Prime Minister]].{{efn|name="KidnapPM" |Recounted in the short story ''The Kidnapped Prime Minister''<ref>{{harvnb|Christie|2012}}</ref> }} Readers were told that the British authorities had learned of Poirot's keen investigative ability from certain members of [[Belgian Royal Family|Belgium's royal family]].

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After the war, Poirot became a private detective and began undertaking civilian cases. He moved into what became both his home and work address, Flat 203 at 56B Whitehaven Mansions. Hastings first visits the flat when he returns to England in June 1935 from Argentina in ''[[The A.B.C. Murders]]'', Chapter 1. The [[ITV (TV network)|ITV]] series ''[[Agatha Christie's Poirot]]'' uses [[Florin Court]] in Charterhouse Square to represent Whitehaven Mansions, even though it is in the wrong part of London and was built in 1936, decades after Poirot fictionally moved in.

According to Hastings, it was chosen by Poirot "entirely on account of its strict geometrical appearance and proportion" and described as the "newest type of service flat". His first case in this period was "The Affair at the Victory Ball", which allowed Poirot to enter high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Between the world wars, Poirot travelled all over Europe and the Middle East investigating crimes and solving murders. Most of his cases occurred during this time, and he was at the height of his powers at this point in his life. In ''The Murder on the Links'', the Belgian pits his grey cells against a French murderer. In the Middle East, he solved the cases ''Death on the Nile'' and ''Murder in Mesopotamia'' with ease, and even survived ''An Appointment with Death''. As he passed through Eastern Europe on his return trip, he solved ''The Murder on the Orient Express''. He did not travel to Africa or Asia, probably to avoid seasickness.

<blockquote>It is this villainous sea that troubles me! The ''mal de mer'' – it is horrible suffering!<ref>Poirot, in {{harvnb|Christie|2012}}</ref></blockquote>

It was during this time he met the Countess Vera Rossakoff, a glamorous jewel thief. The history of the countess is, like Poirot's, steeped in mystery. She claims to have been a member of the Russian aristocracy before the Russian Revolution and suffered greatly as a result, but how much of that story is true is an open question. Even Poirot acknowledges that Rossakoff offered wildly varying accounts of her early life. Poirot later became smitten with the woman and allowed her to escape justice.<ref>Cassatis, John (1979). ''The Diaries of A. Christie''. London.</ref>

<blockquote>It is the misfortune of small, precise men always to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination that the countess held for him.<ref>"The Capture of Cerebus" (1947). The first sentence quoted is also a close paraphrase of something said to Poirot by Hastings in Chapter 18 of ''The Big Four''{{harvnb|Christie|2004b}}</ref></blockquote>

Although letting the countess escape was morally questionable, it was not uncommon. In ''The Nemean Lion'', Poirot sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, allowing her to evade prosecution by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who, Poirot discovered, had plans to commit murder. Poirot even sent Miss Carnaby two hundred pounds as a final payoff prior to the conclusion of her dog kidnapping campaign. In ''The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'', Poirot allowed the murderer to escape justice through suicide and then withheld the truth to spare the feelings of the murderer's relatives. 

In ''The Augean Stables'', he helped the government to cover up vast corruption. In ''Murder on the Orient Express'', Poirot allowed the murderers to go free after discovering that twelve different people participated in the murder, each one stabbing the victim in a darkened carriage, after drugging him into unconsciousness so that there was no way for anyone to definitively determine which of them actually delivered the killing blow. The victim had committed a disgusting crime which led to the deaths of at least five people, and there was no question of his guilt, but he had been acquitted in America in a miscarriage of justice. 

Considering it poetic justice that twelve jurors had acquitted him and twelve people had stabbed him, Poirot produced an alternative sequence of events to explain the death involving an unknown additional passenger on the train, with the medical examiner agreeing to doctor his own report to support this theory.

After his cases in the Middle East, Poirot returned to Britain. Apart from some of the so-called Labours of Hercules (see next section) he very rarely went abroad during his later career. He moved into Styles Court towards the end of his life.

While Poirot was usually paid handsomely by clients, he was also known to take on cases that piqued his curiosity, although they did not pay well.

Poirot shows a love of steam trains, which Christie contrasts with Hastings' love of autos: this is shown in ''[[Poirot's Early Cases|The Plymouth Express]]'', ''[[The Mystery of the Blue Train]]'', ''Murder on the Orient Express'', and ''The ABC Murders''. In the TV series, steam trains are seen in nearly all of the episodes.

=== Retirement ===

<blockquote>That's the way of it. Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna's farewell performance won't be in it with yours, Poirot.<ref>{{harvnb|Christie|2006a}} Dr. Burton in the Preface</ref></blockquote>

Confusion surrounds Poirot's retirement. Most of the cases covered by Poirot's private detective agency take place before his retirement to attempt to grow larger [[Squash (plant)|marrows]], at which time he solves ''The Murder of Roger Ackroyd''. It has been said that the twelve cases related in ''The Labours of Hercules'' (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before ''Roger Ackroyd'', and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. 

There is specific mention in "The Capture of Cerberus" of the twenty-year gap between Poirot's previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the ''Labours'' precede the events in ''Roger Ackroyd'', then the Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty years ''later'' than it was published, and so must any of the cases that refer to it. One alternative would be that having failed to grow marrows once, Poirot is determined to have another go, but this is specifically denied by Poirot himself.<ref>{{harvnb|Christie|2004a|loc=Chapter 13}} in response to the suggestion that he might take up gardening in his retirement, Poirot answers "Once the vegetable marrows, yes – but never again".</ref> 

In "The Erymanthian Boar", a character is said to have been turned out of Austria by the [[Nazism|Nazis]], implying that the events of ''[[The Labours of Hercules]]'' took place after 1937. Another alternative would be to suggest that the Preface to the ''Labours'' takes place at one date but that the labours are completed over a matter of twenty years. None of the explanations is especially attractive.

In terms of a rudimentary chronology, Poirot speaks of retiring to grow marrows in Chapter 18 of ''The Big Four''{{sfn|Christie|2004b|loc=Chapter 18}} (1927) which places that novel out of published order before ''Roger Ackroyd''. He declines to solve a case for the Home Secretary because he is retired in Chapter One of ''Peril at End House'' (1932). He has certainly retired at the time of ''Three Act Tragedy'' (1935) but he does not enjoy his retirement and repeatedly takes cases thereafter when his curiosity is engaged. 

He continues to employ his secretary, Miss Lemon, at the time of the cases retold in ''Hickory Dickory Dock'' and ''Dead Man's Folly'', which take place in the mid-1950s. It is, therefore, better to assume that Christie provided no authoritative chronology for Poirot's retirement but assumed that he could either be an active detective, a consulting detective, or a retired detective as the needs of the immediate case required.

One consistent element about Poirot's retirement is that his fame declines during it, so that in the later novels he is often disappointed when characters, especially younger characters, recognise neither him nor his name:

<blockquote>"I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am ''Hercule Poirot''."<br/>

The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.<br/>

"What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?"{{sfn|Christie|1952|loc=Chapter 4}}</blockquote>

=== Post–World War II ===
{{Blockquote | He, I knew, was not likely to be far from his headquarters. The time when cases had drawn him from one end of England to the other was past. |  Hastings{{Sfn |Christie|2004b|loc = Chapter 1}}{{Page needed | date = August 2014}}}}

Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with ''Three Act Tragedy'' (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as ''Taken at the Flood'', ''[[After the Funeral]]'', and ''Hickory Dickory Dock'', he is even less in evidence, frequently passing the duties of main interviewing detective to a subsidiary character. In ''Cat Among the Pigeons'', Poirot's entrance is so late as to be almost an afterthought. Whether this was a reflection of his age or of Christie's distaste for him, is impossible to assess. ''[[Crooked House]]'' (1949) and ''[[Ordeal by Innocence]]'' (1957), which could easily have been Poirot novels, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of his presence in such works.

Towards the end of his career, it becomes clear that Poirot's retirement is no longer a convenient fiction.  He assumes a genuinely inactive lifestyle during which he concerns himself with studying famous unsolved cases of the past and reading detective novels. He even writes a book about mystery fiction in which he deals sternly with [[Edgar Allan Poe]] and [[Wilkie Collins]].{{sfn|Christie | 2011c |loc =Chapter 1}}{{Page needed | date = August 2014}}  In the absence of a more appropriate puzzle, he solves such inconsequential domestic riddles as the presence of three pieces of orange peel in his umbrella stand.{{sfn|Christie | 2006a |loc=Chapter 14}} {{Page needed | date = August 2014}}

Poirot (and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator){{efn | In ''The Pale Horse'', Chapter 1, the novel's narrator, Mark Easterbrook, disapprovingly describes a typical "Chelsea girl"{{Sfn | Christie |1961}}{{Page needed | date = August 2014}} in much the same terms that Poirot uses in Chapter 1 of ''Third Girl'', suggesting that the condemnation of fashion is authorial.{{Sfn | Christie | 2011c}}{{Page needed | date = August 2014}}}} becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up-and-coming generation's young people. In ''Hickory Dickory Dock'', he investigates the strange goings-on in a student hostel, while in ''Third Girl'' (1966) he is forced into contact with the smart set of Chelsea youths. In the growing drug and pop culture of the 1960s, he proves himself once again but has become heavily reliant on other investigators, especially the [[private investigator]], Mr. Goby, who provide him with the clues that he can no longer gather for himself.
{{Blockquote | ''You're too old''.  Nobody told me you were so old. I really don't want to be rude but – there it is. ''You're too old''. I'm really very sorry. | Norma Restarick to Poirot in ''Third Girl'', Chapter 1{{Sfn |Christie | 2011c|loc=Chapter 1}}{{Page needed | date = August 2014}}}}

Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically; by the time Arthur Hastings meets Poirot again in ''Curtain'', he looks very different from his previous appearances, having become thin with age and with obviously dyed hair.

=== Death ===

On the ITV television series, Poirot died in October 1949{{efn|The extensive letter addressed to Hastings where he explains how he solved the case is dated from October 1949 <ref>"Curtain", 2013</ref>}} from complications of a heart condition at the end of ''[[Curtain: Poirot's Last Case|Curtain]]''. This took place at Styles Court, the scene of his first English case in 1916. In Christie's novels, he lived into the early 1970s, perhaps even until 1975 when ''Curtain'' was published. 

In ''Curtain'', Poirot himself became a murderer, in order to prevent further murders instigated by a man who manipulated others to kill for him, subtly and psychologically manipulating the moments where others desire to commit murder so that they carry out the crime when they might otherwise dismiss their thoughts as nothing more than a momentary passion. Poirot executed the man, as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been convicted. 

Poirot himself died shortly after having committed murder. He had moved his [[amyl nitrite]] pills out of his own reach, possibly because of guilt. Poirot himself noted that he wanted to kill his victim shortly before his own death so that he could avoid succumbing to the arrogance of the murderer, concerned that he might come to view himself as entitled to kill those whom he deemed necessary to eliminate.

It is revealed at the end of ''Curtain'' that he fakes his need for a wheelchair to fool people into believing that he is suffering from [[arthritis]], to give the impression that he is more infirm than he is. His last recorded words are "''Cher ami!''", spoken to Hastings as the Captain left his room. The TV adaptation adds that as Poirot is dying alone, he whispers out his final prayer to God in these words: "Forgive me... forgive...". Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friend Hastings and Hastings' daughter Judith. Hastings reasoned, "Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last."

Poirot's actual death and funeral occurred in ''Curtain'', years after his retirement from the active investigation, but it was not the first time that Hastings attended the funeral of his best friend. In ''The Big Four'' (1927), Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four.