Similarly to his friend Poirot, Hastings ' life and background before 1916 are pure estimation though the reader is able to pinpoint Hastings ' approximate birth year as 1886 as he mentions that John Cavendish was ' a good fifteen years senior ' though hardly looking ' his forty-five years ' in the first chapter of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

After Mary has gone Poirot goes out and Hastings receives a visit from Lady Yardly ( she was advised to visit Poirot by her friend Mary Cavendish, who appears in The Mysterious Affair at Styles ).

In the 1986 TV play, Murder by the Book, Christie herself ( Dame Peggy Ashcroft ) murdered one of her fictional-turned-real characters, Poirot.

Hercule Poirot (; ) is a fictional Belgian detective, created by Agatha Christie.

Poirot has been portrayed on radio, on screen, for films and television, by various actors, including John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina and David Suchet.

Poirot also bears a striking resemblance to A. E. W. Mason's fictional detective — Inspector Hanaud of the French Sûreté — who, first appearing in the 1910 novel At the Villa Rose, predates the writing of the first Poirot novel by six years.

By 1930, Agatha Christie found Poirot " insufferable ", and by 1960 she felt that he was a " detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep ".

Poirot has dark hair, which he dyes later in life ( though many of his screen incarnations are portrayed as bald or balding ), and green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining " like a cat's " when he is struck by a clever idea.

In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based detective, depending on logic, which is represented in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of " the little grey cells " and " order and method ".

As early as Murder on the Links, where he still largely depends on clues, Poirot mocks a rival " bloodhound " detective who focuses on the traditional trail of clues that had been established in detective fiction by the example of Sherlock Holmes: footprints, fingerprints and cigar ash.

In the later novels Christie often uses the word mountebank when Poirot is being assessed by other characters, showing that he has successfully passed himself off as a charlatan or fraud.

It was chosen by Poirot for its symmetry.

In The Nemean Lion, he sided with the criminal, Miss Amy Carnaby, and saved her from having to face justice by blackmailing his client Sir Joseph Hoggins, who himself was plotting murder and was unwise enough to let Poirot discover this.

While Poirot is usually paid handsomely by clients who request his help, he is known to also take on cases that may not pay well simply because the mystery interests him.

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.

There is certainly a case for saying that Crooked House ( 1949 ) and Ordeal by Innocence ( 1957 ), which are not Poirot novels at all but so easily could have been, represent a logical endpoint of the general diminution of Poirot himself within the Poirot sequence.

Poirot ( and, it is reasonable to suppose, his creator ) becomes increasingly bemused by the vulgarism of the up and coming generation's young people.

Notably, during this time his physical characteristics also change dramatically, and 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.

Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friend Hastings and Hastings ' daughter Judith.

Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them, and for his tendency to unknowingly " stumble " onto the truth.

Hastings is a man who is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and possessing unwavering loyalty towards Poirot.

In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by British actress Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie's Poirot, she was portrayed by Pauline Moran.

The police are keen to arrest him, but Poirot intervenes by proving he could not have purchased the poison.

When Henrietta attempts to retrieve it in order to destroy the final means of proving Gerda's guilt, Poirot arrives and prevents her from drinking tea that Gerda has poisoned.

But when she is found dead, Hercule Poirot proposes to solve the case in twenty-four hours, even though he has no way of even proving whether it was murder.

His name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes ' Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans ' Monsieur Poirot, a retired Belgian police officer living in London.

Christie's Poirot was a francophone Belgian.

Unlike the models mentioned above, Christie's Poirot was clearly the result of her early development of the detective in her first book, written in 1916 but not published until 1920.

On publication of the latter, Poirot was the only fictional character to be given an obituary in the New York Times ; 6 August 1975 " Hercule Poirot is Dead ; Famed Belgian Detective ".

Yet the public loved him, and Christie refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked, and what the public liked was Poirot.

: " By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young Belgian lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man ( Hercule Poirot ) muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache.

It was also in this period that Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof onto the public below.

In The Double Clue Poirot mentions that he was Chief of Police of Brussels, until " the Great War " ( WWI ) forced him to leave for England.

( This building was in fact built in 1936, decades later than Poirot fictionally moved in.

) His first case was " The Affair at the Victory Ball ", which saw Poirot enter the high society and begin his career as a private detective.

Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted.

Whether this was during one of Poirot ’ s numerous retirements or before she entered his employment is unknown.

In Agatha Christie's Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson.

In the film, Thirteen at Dinner ( 1985 ), adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, the role of Japp was taken by the actor David Suchet, who would later star as Poirot in the ITV adaptations.

It could be suggested that in Murder on the Orient Express Poirot allows the murderers to escape justice as well, after he discovers that twelve different people stabbed the victim – Mr. Ratchett – in his sleep.

Hastings, a former British Army officer, first meets Poirot during Poirot's years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England.

Suchet himself said to The Strand magazine: " What I did was, I had my file on one side of me and a pile of stories on the other side and day after day, week after week, I ploughed through most of Agatha Christie's novels about Hercule Poirot and wrote down characteristics until I had a file full of documentation of the character.

" He concluded, " Largely by a careful study of the score, Poirot is able to reach the truth, and Mrs. Christie sees to it that he does so by way of springing upon the reader one shattering surprise after another.

The story starts with Hastings meeting Poirot after almost a year.

Nearly a month after Alice's murder, ABC sends another letter, directing Poirot to Bexhill.

In two of the books in which he appears — The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The ABC Murders — Hastings plays a prominent role in the resolution of the mystery, with a casual observation he makes at one point in the novel leading Poirot to realise the guilty party: By mentioning that Poirot had to straighten some spill holders and ornaments in Styles, he prompts Poirot to realise that someone had moved them, thus allowing Poirot to discover a crucial piece of evidence, and when he suggests that an incorrectly addressed letter revealing the latest crime in ABC Murders was addressed that way on purpose, Poirot realises that the letter had indeed been wrongly addressed deliberately so that it would not be received until after the murderer had committed his crime, revealing that the murderer had attached greater importance to that particular murder, and wanted to be certain that it was committed.

Hastings, however, appeared only intermittently in those Poirot novels and stories written after 1925 and only once in those written after 1937.

Poirot then introduces Hastings to Captain Kent who tells them of the sinking of many U. S. boats after the Japanese earthquake.

She comes down, after initially refusing, when Poirot sends his card.

Ryland is released after his manservant informs the police that all of it was just a wager, and Poirot realises that the manservant was Number Four.

A month after the case, Japp informs Poirot of another mysterious death-the chess grandmasters Gilmour Wilson and Doctor Savaronoff were playing chess when shortly into the game Gilmour Wilson collapsed dead due to heart failure.

He also receives a letter from Poirot to be given after his death saying to leave for South America, as it was part of the plan.

Evil Under the Sun was the second film to be made with Peter Ustinov as Poirot after his debut in the part in the 1978 film Death on the Nile.

Sixteen years after Caroline Crale has been convicted of the murder of her husband, Amyas Crale, her daughter, Carla Lemarchant, approaches Poirot to investigate the case.

Like One, Two, Buckle My Shoe before it and Hickory Dickory Dock after it, the novel is named for a nursery rhyme usually referred to as This Little Piggy that is used by Poirot to organise his thoughts regarding the investigation.

Finally, Angela believes her sister to be innocent, but a letter that Caroline wrote to her after the murder contains no protestation of innocence, and makes Poirot doubt Caroline's innocence for perhaps the first time.

Furthermore, after Poirot exposes Elsa as Amyas ' murderer, Lucy aims at her with a pistol, with Elsa provoking Lucy to shoot her and Poirot urging Lucy to spare Elsa's life so that justice can truly be served.