Poirot asks Hastings if he opened the windows to which Hastings replies in the negative.

Poirot replies that if he did, there would be no body to find.

George ( his last name is never revealed ) is a stereotypical English valet who enters Poirot ’ s employment in 1923 and does not leave his side until the 1970s, shortly before Poirot ’ s death.

The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book ( The Mysterious Affair at Styles ), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book ( Curtain ), where he visits Styles once again before his death.

Though this may be the first published book of Miss Agatha Christie, she betrays the cunning of an old hand … You must wait for the last-but-one chapter in the book for the last link in the chain of evidence that enabled Mr. Poirot to unravel the whole complicated plot and lay the guilt where it really belonged.

On page 509 of her autobiography Christie refers to the last Poirot and Miss Marple novels that she penned during the Second World War by saying she had written an extra two books during the first years of the war in anticipation of being killed in the raids, as she was working in London.

The last Marple novel Christie wrote, Nemesis, was published in 1971, followed by Christie's last Poirot novel Elephants Can Remember in 1972 and then in 1973 by her very last novel Postern of Fate.

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.

This was the last novel of an especially prolific phase of Christie's work on Poirot.

The final Poirot novel that Christie wrote, Elephants Can Remember, was published in 1972, followed by Christie's last novel, Postern of Fate.

This was the last of Christie's novels to feature either of these characters, although in terms of publication it was succeeded by Curtain: Poirot ’ s Last Case, which had been written in the early 1940s.

And yet, when the evil-hearted old tyrant has been murdered at last and Poirot considers the suspects, one follows with genuine interest the unraveling of even unexciting clues.

The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and is the second to last Poirot novel ( the last being 1975's Curtain: Poirot's Last Case ) to be published that features Hastings as narrator.

She appears in five of the last nine Christie novels featuring Poirot to be written, and appears on her own without Poirot at all in The Pale Horse ( 1961 ).

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

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.

At the time, of course, she had no idea she would be going on writing Poirot books for many decades to come.

Poirot had been forcibly retired from the Belgian police force prior to the time he met Hastings in 1916 as a refugee on the case retold in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

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.

The Scotsman of November 19, 1936 said, " There was a time when M. Hercule Poirot thought of going into retirement in order to devote himself to the cultivation of marrows.

The screenplay followed the book closely with some minor changes and some characters omitted: in the adaptation there was only one archeologist, there was no doctor, Jane was a stewardess and in the end Poirot does not match Jane with young archeologist as mentioned in the novel and some other minor changes ( such as in the TV adaptation, Poirot takes Japp to Paris, whereas in the book he takes the French Surete detective and also in the book most of the characters have come from Le Pinet where they have been enjoying some time at the casino, whereas in the adaptation the characters have been at a tennis match in Paris.

Once acquitted, due to double jeopardy, he could not be tried for the crime a second time should any genuine evidence against him be subsequently discovered, hence prompting Poirot to keep him out of prison when he realized that Alfred wanted to be arrested.

Ironically, this seemingly apparent observation was the truth: ABC didn't want Poirot to reach Churston on time.

The book was mentioned in Agatha Christie's mystery ( Hercule Poirot series ) novel Five Little Pigs, when Poirot asks one of the suspects ( Angela Warren ) if she read the book at the time the crime was committed.

Maurice Richardson in a short review in the 7 December 1941 issue of The Observer wrote: " Agatha Christie takes time off from Poirot and the haute cuisine of crime to write a light war-time spy thriller.

The Gardeners were with Poirot the entire time.

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.

Norton, arrogantly self-assured in the face of both the accusation and the threat, insisted on swapping cups, but both contained the same sleeping pills that had previously been used by Poirot to drug Hastings ; guessing that Norton would request the swap, Poirot had drugged both cups, knowing that his time taking the pills would give him a higher tolerance for a dose that would put Norton out.

At the time that Curtain was written this was almost certainly intended to be a reference to Death on the Nile, but if Hastings has seen Poirot a year before his death, then we must suppose that Poirot made a second trip there in about 1974.

Eventually, the dancer Mirelle, who was on the train with Derek, tells Poirot she saw Derek leave Ruth's compartment around the time the murder would have taken place.

Curtain was written at the same time and similarly locked away but publication of this latter book would not be possible until the end of her writing career as it recounts the death of Poirot.

Each " elephant " remembers ( or mis-remembers ) a very different set of circumstances, but Poirot notes some facts that may have particular significance: Margaret Ravenscroft owned four wigs at the time of her death, and a few days before her death, she was seriously bitten by the otherwise-devoted family dog.

Poirot suspects the truth, but can substantiate it only after contacting Zélie Meauhourat, the governess employed by the Ravenscrofts at the time of their death.

Simon Nowell-Smith's review in the Times Literary Supplement of May 7, 1938 concluded, " Poirot, if the mellowing influence of time has softened many of his mannerisms, has lost none of his skill.

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 ".

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

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.

It was chosen by Poirot for its symmetry.

( 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.