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.

This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels, partly because there is rarely a narrator so there is no one for Poirot to mislead.

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.

Christie wrote that Poirot is a Roman Catholic, and gave her character a strong sense of Catholic morality later in works.

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

They later emigrate to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a " very unhappy old man.

He first met Poirot in Belgium, 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery and later that year they joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara.

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.

The main difference between Ja ' far in " The Three Apples " and later fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, however, is that Ja ' far has no actual desire to solve the case.

Hours later, Poirot and the others prepare to leave, and go to thank Shaitana.

* In chapter 2, Anne Meredith tells Poirot that she knows Ariadne Oliver from her book The Body in the Library, which was the title of a book later written by Agatha Christie and published in 1942.

* In Chapter 12 of a later Poirot novel, Mrs McGinty's Dead ( 1952 ), Christie's alter ego, Ariadne Oliver, refers to a novel of hers in which she made a blowpipe one foot long only to be told later that they were six feet long.

Styles was Christie's first published novel, introducing Hercule Poirot, Inspector ( later, Chief Inspector ) Japp, and Lieutenant Hastings ( later, Captain ).

Austin Trevor played Poirot, a role he reprised later that year in the film adaptation of Christie's 1930 play, Black Coffee.

But Poirot is helpless: the letter has arrived three days later than it was supposed to, just because ABC misspelled Poirot's address.

Poirot expects to unmask ABC on the Doncaster race course, but ABC strikes in a cinema hall instead, killing George Earlsfield, instead of Roger Emmanuel Downes, a logical victim sitting only two seats later.

Hastings's appearances in Poirot's later novels are restricted to a few cases in which he participates on his periodic returns to England from Argentina ; Poirot comments in The ABC Murders that he enjoys Hastings's visits because he always has his most interesting cases when Hastings is with him.

In other respects there is very little personal detail regarding him in these novels, until Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, which is presumed to take place a great many years later ; with his wife now dead, Hastings rejoins Poirot at Styles to help Poirot tackle one last case, Poirot dying of a heart attack at the conclusion but leaving Hastings a confession explaining his role in events.

A police officer somewhat similar in character ( Superintendent Spence ) was introduced as a significant recurring character in the later Poirot novels.

After the war Poirot became a free agent and began undertaking civilian cases.

Hercule Poirot became famous with the publication, in 1926, of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial.

He then became editor for the last few issues of The Poirot Collection, a partwork which presented the Agatha Christie's Poirot television episodes.

Pearson was arrested and Poirot became a shareholder in a Burmese mine.

The first Hercule Poirot began with tram passengers and Belgian refugees.

Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels, one play, and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.

: " 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.

Christie wrote little of Poirot ’ s childhood though in Three Act Tragedy she writes that he comes from a large family with little wealth.

In the short story The Chocolate Box ( 1923 ) Poirot provides Captain Arthur Hastings with an account of what he considers to be his only failure.

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.

Just a case or two, just one case more – the Prima Donna ’ s farewell performance won ’ t be in it with yours, Poirot.

Beginning with Three Act Tragedy ( 1934 ), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a sub-genre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events.

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.

Japp is outgoing, loud and sometimes inconsiderate by nature, and his relationship with the bourgeois Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot ’ s world.

These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with cases that would interest him.

Peter Ustinov played Poirot a total of six times, starting with Death on the Nile ( 1978 ).

In Agatha Christie's, " Appointment with Death " ( 1938 ), the mysterious and enigmatic Petra is the setting for a murder mystery featuring Hercule Poirot.

Suchet appeared as Inspector Japp in the 1985 film adaptation of Lord Edgware Dies, screen-name Thirteen at Dinner, with Peter Ustinov portraying Poirot.

Shaitana jokes about Poirot's visit to the snuff box exhibition, and claims that he has a better " collection " that Poirot would enjoy: individuals who have got away with murder.

Once the preliminary police work has been done, Poirot reveals Shaitana's strange mention of a " collection " to the other three with whom he played bridge.

At this point, Mrs. Lorrimer contacts Poirot with surprising news.

He testifies that he saw Roberts inject Lorrimer with a syringe ; a syringe, Poirot reveals, full of a lethal anaesthetic.

There are delightful passages when Poirot anxiously compares other moustaches with his own and awards his own the palm, when his lips are forced to utter the unaccustomed words ' I was in error ', when Mrs. Oliver, famous authoress, discourses upon art and craft of fiction.

Frustrated with the evident artificiality of the blowpipe, an item that could hardly have been used without being seen by another passenger, Poirot suggests that the means of delivering the dart may have been something else.

Not content with solving the mystery, Poirot invites Mr. Clancy to the Denouncement where he gleefully allows the Novelist to see how a Real Life Detective solves a case, to both men's great enjoyment, and finally in a single stroke Poirot makes a romantic match by pairing off Jane Grey with the younger of the archaeologists.