" 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.

Rich has now been arrested as the obvious suspect but Poirot sees a flaw in that he cannot see how or why Rich would calmly have gone to bed with a bleeding corpse in the chest.

Poirot does meet David Baker, Norma ’ s boyfriend, in the house, and sees that Norma ’ s stepmother, Mary, is highly annoyed to discover him there.

Poirot sees an immediate link between the two Polish women and the Stymphalean Birds.

In the hall of Mrs Larkin's house Poirot sees the abandoned drinks flask and finds it full of white powder.

She rushes out of the shop and Poirot sees that a surly-looking man has been listening into their conversation.

Poirot sees that Reedburn was killed at this end of the room and his body dragged to the recess facing the garden.

He then cryptically turns the conversation round to a wasp's nest on a tree that he sees nearby and Poirot and Harrison discuss the destruction of it.

Later on, Poirot sees the Colonel demonstrating amazing card tricks to the two young girls who have taken him under their wing.

The investigation shifts back to the female Cloades, but Poirot discovers that the immediate cause of Arden's death may have been smashing his head against a heavy marble mantelpiece.

Poirot travels with Diana to the family seat of Lyde Manor where he meets the people involved.

Poirot starts to investigate, finding out to everyone's puzzlement that Cronshaw was emphatically opposed to drugs, that Beltane's costume had a hump and a ruffle and that a curtained recess exists in the supper room.

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

An impatient man, whose lack of imagination is often playfully ridiculed by Poirot.

With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked ( a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was and would accept his word without question ) moved the body back to Norton's room in his wheelchair.

Poirot goes to the house and meets the doctor, a police inspector, the dead man's second wife, his daughter from his first marriage, Joanna and Hugo Cornworthy in whose office Poirot had had his meeting with Farley.

Shortly afterwards, however, a second death in suspiciously similar circumstances and with many of the same people present puts both Poirot and a team of sleuths on the trail of a poisoner whose motive is not clear.

Poirot as a man is quite as delightful as ever, and Poirot as a detective not only perplexes the pleasant and not too intelligent hospital nurse, whose duty it is to tell the story, but, again as usual, the intelligent reader as well.

An unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of April 10, 1948 said, " Hercule Poirot, whose eggshaped cranium is crammed with lively gray cells, proves himself a bit of a mug before he sorts out all the details of Arden's death and other even more baffling mysteries.

She now offers to help Poirot who takes up her offer by getting her to pose as a maid in the house of Mrs Wetherby, a resident in the village for whom Mrs McGinty worked as housekeeper, and whose daughter, Deirdre, Poirot suspects may have some connection with the circumstances surrounding Mrs McGinty's murder.

Poirot turns his attention to the reappearance of the diamond ring, and confronts Valerie Hobhouse, in whose soup the ring was found.

Poirot, whose suspicions about Valerie Hobhouse ’ s role in the smuggling operation have been proved correct by a police raid on her beauty shop, now closes the case.

In Chapter 17, III, of the novel, Julia tells Poirot that she has been told of him by Maureen Summerhayes, at whose rather dilapidated guest house he had been forced to stay during the case related in Mrs. McGinty's Dead.

Youthful in two Christie books written in the 1920s, middle-aged in a World-War II spy novel, Tommy and Tuppence were unusual in that they aged according to real time, unlike Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, whose age remained more or less the same from their first novels in the 1920s, to their last novels in the 1970s.

When she next went in there, the chambermaid returned the empty case to the drawer whose runners had been silenced with French polish, traces of which Poirot found in the room next door.

Poirot is asked to help the Prime Minister, Edward Ferrier, whose predecessor in the role was his father-in-law John Hammett, now Lord Cornworthy.

Four of his guests had the opportunity to take the items – Mr Johnston, a South African millionaire only just arrived in London ; Countess Vera Rossakoff, a refugee from the Russian revolution ; Bernard Parker, a young and effeminate agent for Mr Hardman, and Lady Runcorn, a middle-aged society lady whose aunt is a kleptomaniac. Poirot examines the scene of the crime and finds a man's glove and a cigarette case with the initials " BP ".

Poirot then spoke to the dead man's doctor and discovered that M. de Saint Alard was an ardent Catholic whose friendship with M. Déroulard was being sorely strained by the political turbulence at the time.

Poirot and his counterparts are perfectly respectable people ; ;

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.

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 Hastings are reunited in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, having been earlier reunited in The ABC Murders and Dumb Witness when Hastings arrives in England for business.

In Agatha Christie's Poirot series of books, Poirot often has a tisane and accounts this as being the reason why his " little grey cells " are superior to others.

After Anne makes her gift suggestions and leaves, Poirot discovers that two pairs of the stockings are missing, confirming his suspicion that Anne is a thief, and seemingly giving weight to his suspicion that she stole from Mrs. Benson and killed her when she feared she had been discovered.

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.

Not that such minor matters are of the slightest consequence to the reader ; the main thing is that this is an Agatha Christie story, featuring Hercule Poirot, who is, by his own admission, the world's greatest detective.

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

Poirot is also aided by his friends Hastings and Japp, while an Inspector Crome and a Dr. Thompson are also roped in.

Poirot offers him some financial advice and also hints that the headaches are actually due to the wrong power of his spectacles.

There are even similarities of role: Hastings is Poirot's only close friend, and the two share a flat briefly when Poirot sets up his detective agency.

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.

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.

Like those of Miss Lemon and Arthur Hastings, the role of Inspector Japp in Poirot's career has been exaggerated by adaptations of Christie's original novels ; specifically by the TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, where these characters are often introduced into stories that did not originally feature them.

Japp and Hastings are also generally astonished to find that Poirot cannot understand anything typically English ( like cricket, which he maintains is utter nonsense ).

In The Pale Horse, Mrs Oliver becomes acquainted with the Rev and Mrs Dane Calthrop, who are friends of Miss Marple ( The Moving Finger ); thus establishing that Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot exist in the same world.

The two are caught by a trap ; a matchbox filled with a chemical explodes knocking Hastings unconscious and killing Poirot.

But it was an act ; the lights went out and Poirot and Hastings are knocked unconscious and dragged away.

Among Contreras ' later film roles some of the best-known are as writer Rodolfo Walsh's version of Hercule Poirot in Santiago Carlos Oves ' Asesinato a Distancia ( Murder at a Distance, 1998 ), and as the merciless detective in Eduardo Mignogna's fact-based La fuga ( The Escape, 2001 ).