Poirot Project: Double Sin (review)

This post is part of my 2016 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The seventh episode of the second series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 11th February 1990. It was based on the short story of the same name (aka ‘By Road or Rail’), which was first published in the Sunday Dispatch in 1928.

In my last post, I talked a bit about Poirot and Hastings’s living arrangements in the early short stories. This domestic set-up changes after The Murder on the Links (1923), which signals the end of the cosy ‘shared rooms’ of the Sketch short stories; by The Big Four (1927) and Peril at End House (1932), Hastings is ensconced in his ranch in Argentina with his wife, only popping back occasionally to meet up with his old friend. In the scheme of Poirot and Hastings’s friendship, ‘Double Sin’ takes place during this time – Poirot is now living alone in ‘rooms’ (he’s not yet moved into his swanky serviced apartment), and Hastings is living elsewhere. The story begins with Hastings arriving at Poirot’s lodgings:

‘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. My little friend was a strange mixture of Flemish thrift and artistic fervour. He accepted many cases in which he had little interest owing to the first instinct being predominant.’

There are a couple of things that interest me about this introduction. Firstly, this story is set during the height of Poirot’s fame as a private detective, despite the fact it was published after The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) and his first failed ‘retirement’ from detective work. The rich women with missing bracelets returns to an idea from one of the earlier short stories, ‘The Adventure of the Western Star’ (the adaptation of which will appear later in this series), that Poirot became quite fashionable for a time. Secondly, although Hastings clearly no longer shares rooms with Poirot, there’s no mention of his wife or his ranch anywhere in the story. In fact, there’s a little moment where Poirot behaves as though Hastings is still single (and Hastings responds as though he is still single):

‘“You were observing the pretty young lady who booked No. 5, the next seat to ours. Ah! Yes, my friend, I saw you. […]”
“Really, Poirot,” I said, blushing.
“Auburn hair – always the auburn hair!”’

I’m not sure if this little exchange means that the story is set earlier than it was published – though this wouldn’t really make sense as Hastings lived with Poirot right up until his bachelordom ended. Instead, I like to think of it as an indication that the two men find it easy to slip back into their old ways, even after Hastings has got married and moved away. If you remove the first sentence, ‘Double Sin’ could very easily be one of the 1923 Sketch stories.

Hastings arrives at his ‘overworked’ friend’s rooms and is quickly told that Poirot has promised to undertake some work for ‘Joseph Aarons, the theatrical agent’. Aarons doesn’t actually appear in the short story, but he appeared in the novels The Murder on the Links, The Mystery of the Blue Train and The Big Four. So, if you’re reading Christie’s stories in the order in which they were published, this character’s name will be familiar. Of course, I’m rereading them in the order ITV chose to adapt them, so have to keep referring to texts I’ve not got to yet in order to remind myself of who appears where. Had I not already read Links, Blue Train and Big Four, the name of Joseph Aarons would mean nothing. In this case – as with other minor recurring characters in Christie’s texts – it doesn’t really matter whether the reader is familiar with Joseph Aarons or not. Hastings makes this clear in his narration, when Poirot asks him if he calls the theatrical agent: ‘I assented after a moment’s thought. Poirot’s friends are so many and so varied, and range from dustmen to dukes.’ As is often the case, Hastings is acting as a stand-in for the reader; we don’t need to worry about the details, all that matters is that Aarons is one of the detective’s many random friends. His role within the story is clear without any knowledge of his backstory: all you need to know is that it is a letter from Aarons that has compelled Poirot to temporarily leave his cases in London and travel to Charlock Bay in Devon.

As travelling to Charlock Bay by train is somewhat difficult, Hastings books the two men on a Speedy Cars ‘motor coach’ – much to Poirot’s chagrin. On board the coach, they meet a young woman named Mary Durrant, who is carrying a collection of valuable miniatures that are to be sold to an American dealer (Mr J. Baker Wood). Also travelling with them is a man who is ‘trying to grow a moustache and as yet the result is poor’. Hastings is quite taken by the flame-haired Miss Durrant; Poirot is intrigued by the man with the ‘indeterminate moustache’.

At Ebermouth, the coach stops for lunch, and the man with the indeterminate moustache (Norton Kane) removes his suitcase from the coach and leaves the party. Later in the day, when they arrive at Charlock Bay, Miss Durrant discovers that her suitcase has been forced and the miniatures stolen. Poirot is fascinated, and promises to help the distraught young woman.

Just in case the reader is still labouring under the illusion that the ‘business’ with Joseph Aarons is going to play any part in the plot, Hastings summarily dismisses this:

‘We lunched with Joseph Aarons, and after lunch, Poirot announced to me that he had settled the theatrical agent’s problem satisfactorily, and that we could return to Ebermouth as soon as we liked.’

Whatever the problem was, the detective managed to solve it over one lunch date, leaving us in no doubt that a) Poirot can work pretty fast when he needs to, and b) this was really all just an excuse for Poirot and Hastings to go on a coach trip. Sure enough, there’s no more mention of this problem, and Poirot devotes his attention for the rest of the story on the mystery of the missing miniatures.

Like the other earlier Poirot short stories, the puzzle is wrapped up quickly and neatly by the great detective. The solution is a satisfying one, but what really makes this story for me is Poirot’s explanation of how/why he was so interested in the case. At the end of the story, he offers several insights, which are so perfectly Poirot you can’t help but smile.

On ruling out Norton Kane as a serious suspect, Poirot says: ‘With that moustache? A criminal is either clean shaven or he has a proper moustache that can be removed at will.’ While this is partly a continuation of what seems to be a small obsession with Kane’s moustache on the part of our fastidious dandy, what Poirot says makes complete sense. We’ve been told several times that Kane’s ‘indeterminate moustache’ simply draws attention to the man – not very handy for a jewel thief. It’s interesting that the TV adaptation of ‘Double Sin’ followed ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’, as dramatic and removable facial hair is central to the disappearing act in that story.

On explaining how Mary Durrant attempted to use the two men in her nefarious scheme, Poirot (with characteristic snark) explains:

‘Mademoiselle Mary has only to find a couple of mugs who will be sympathetic to her charm and champion beauty in distress. But one of the mugs was no mug – he was Hercule Poirot!’

For once, the implications of this don’t go over Hastings’s head, who grumpily thinks to himself: ‘I hardly like the inference.’ But Poirot’s cheeky little comment does remind us that Mary Durrant isn’t the first pretty girl to think she can play Poirot for a mug (that would be Lady Millicent Castle Vaughan – aka Gertie – in ‘The Veiled Lady’), and she won’t be the last (Nick Buckley is just around the corner). Poirot will be approached and befriended by a number of young women in his career – and he’ll always be sympathetic to their charms and a champion in their distress – but because of the likes of Millicent and Mary, we never really know whether we should trust any of them.

Finally, in a hasty attempt to retract his implied insult, Poirot claims that the other ‘mug’ was actually J. Baker Wood, and that the detective felt a strong need to help the hapless American: ‘we visitors, Hastings, must stand together. Me, I am all for the visitors!’ This isn’t a sentiment that Poirot always expresses directly, but there are other stories in which he forms an unspoken bond as a result of shared ‘foreignness’ (e.g. with Mrs Vanderlyn’s French maid in ‘The Incredible Theft’). Significantly, though, it’s rare for Poirot to express this sense of solidarity with Americans; more usually, when confronted by someone from the US, the Belgian aligns himself with his fellow Europeans (the English) against the transatlantic ‘other’. Perhaps it’s the fact that J. Baker Wood has been duped by two (apparently) quintessential English women that provokes his statement.

The TV adaptation of ‘Double Sin’ was directed by Richard Spence and written by Clive Exton. With the exception of the double-length series opener, all the other episodes so far in this series have been adaptations of Sketch short stories (i.e. the 1923 series of stories in which Poirot and Hastings live together). As I’ve said ‘Double Sin’ is a later post-Links story, but because it’s so similar in style to the 1923 stories, Exton hasn’t had to do too much to make it follow on from ‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’ and the rest of the series. Hastings doesn’t need to be added, as he was already there as narrator; the story is set when the two men are sharing a flat in London so Miss Lemon fits right in; Inspector Japp, as usual, can replace ‘the police inspector in charge of the case’… except actually that’s not what happens here (but more on that in a moment).

The episode begins with Poirot in a bad mood. The two friends are visiting a park, and Poirot is in a funk. He wants to retire and complains to Hastings that his career is over. This is a departure from the ‘overworked’ Poirot of the short story, but it continues a theme that runs throughout this series of the TV show.

It’s Poirot’s bad mood, rather than a communication from Aarons, that prompts the men to go on a little trip – though it’s up north, rather than down south, that they head here. They travel to Whitcombe (a fictional Lancashire town, actually filmed in Morecambe). Soon after they arrive, Hastings discovers that their old friend Japp is in town – the policeman is doing a ‘North Country’ lecture tour – what a coincidence!

As Poirot doesn’t seem interested in attending his friend’s lecture, Hastings suggests they take a ‘Speedy Tours’ coach to Windermere. Here, they meet Mary Durrant (played by Caroline Milmoe) and Norton Kane (the man with the indeterminate moustache) (played by Adam Kotz) and, as in the short story, Hastings is charmed by the young woman, while Poirot is curious about the young man. There is a small detail removed from the short story, which is a shame. In Christie’s text, Poirot orchestrates the seating arrangements with a delightful tact that goes straight over his companion’s head:

‘Poirot, rather maliciously, I thought, assigned me the outside place as “I had the mania for the fresh air” and himself occupied the seat next to our fair neighbour [Mary Durrant]. Presently, however, he made amends. The man in seat 6 was a noisy fellow, inclined to be facetious and boisterous, and Poirot asked the girl in a low voice if she would like to change seats with him.’

Is it just me? or does it seem like this might have been Poirot’s plan all along? (Though, is it not also a little odd that Poirot appears to matchmaking his married friend, while Hastings’s poor wife waits patiently on the ranch?)

The TV episode omits this little detail – though it would have made more sense within their chronology! – and simply has Hastings sitting next to Mary from the start.

The disappearance of the miniatures is revealed in a similar way to in the short story, and Norton Kane is once again framed as the main suspect. The TV episode gives more attention to the poorly-moustachioed man, making him seem even more suspicious than in the source text, but adds an expanded backstory to explain his bizarre behaviour. I suppose it should also be noted that the miniatures themselves are also slightly elevated here: they’re now Napoleonic and have increased in value from £500 to £1500.

It’s the investigation that is most altered in the adaptation. As Poirot is insistent he is ‘retired’, he refuses to accept the case. It falls to Hastings to take on the mantle of detective, as he does in other episodes in the series (‘The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim’ and ‘The Adventure of the Western Star’). This leads to some comical moments, as Hastings puts his theories to the local policemen (played by David Hargreaves and Gerard Horan) and is shot down by the common-sensical northerners, and then is given a series of subtle hints by Poirot, despite the fact that the detective is ‘not investigating’. I particularly like Hasting’s attempts to look after his little grey cells through diet and sleep, and his joyous exclamations when he wakes up with (what he believes is) the solution: ‘It must have been the haddock! I feel wonderful!’

Poirot, though, remains in his funk. He takes no enjoyment in his friend’s investigations, and refuses to accompany Hastings on the case. We discover why in due course: when Hastings goes to bed early to let the haddock do its work, Poirot sneaks out of the hotel to attend Japp’s lecture.

This is a lovely moment. Up until this point, we’ve been led to believe that Poirot is simply jealous that Japp has been asked to do a lecture tour – and this is probably partly the case. But as Poirot listens to Japp discussing private detectives, it becomes clear that Poirot is actually worried that the policeman will either slight his abilities, or else leave them out entirely. I’ve always felt that this isn’t just about Poirot’s ego – throughout the series, the friendship between the men is emphasized, and I’ve always felt that part of Poirot’s worry comes from the fear that his friend might say something mean.

His fears are unfounded, of course. Japp sings Poirot’s praises to the rafters, speaking of his pleasure and gratitude at being able to work alongside the little Belgian detective. David Suchet plays Poirot’s response to this beautifully, allowing a series of emotions to play over his face that take us from his initial surprise, through his touching affection, and back to his characteristic pride. At one point, you can even see the tiny hint of a tear in his eye.

The three men come together to wrap the case up and confront the thief at the end of the episode. Japp and Poirot light-heartedly tease Hastings for barking up completely the wrong tree; however, the tables are then turned when Hastings discovers a newspaper clipping in Poirot’s wallet – it seems he knew about Japp’s lecture all along, and that was the reason for his sudden desire to see the Lake District. Now it’s Hastings’s turn to rib his friend – and Japp laughs along. It’s quite charming, really.

So… while the boys are on their jollies in the Lake District, what’s Miss Lemon up to?

Poirot’s secretary isn’t in the short story, and it seems there’s no place for her on the TV version of the Speedy Tours coach either. Instead, she gets her own (rather odd) little story. After being confronted by some kids doing penny-for-the-guy, Miss Lemon is flustered and loses her keys. This means she can’t leave the flat until she finds them – and she can’t find them until she employs the ‘order and method’ espoused by her employer.

While this little vignette is a bit superfluous, there are a couple of nice bits. George Little is back as Dicker – hooray! – in his last (physical) appearance in the series. It’s Dicker’s longest scene, as well, and we get a slight sense of him as a character as well.

When poor Miss Lemon is forced to sleep in her office, as she can’t leave Mr Poirot’s flat unlocked, she has a very weird dream. In an evocative mist, the faces of Poirot and Hastings float towards her, speaking snatches of characteristic dialogue – only Hastings’s voice comes out of Poirot’s mouth, and vice versa. It’s bit trippy, but I kind of like it.

To finish, some miscellaneous thoughts…

I’m afraid I don’t like the TV version of Miss Penn (played by Elspet Gray). In the short story, Mary’s aunt is a sweet little old lady with ‘pink-and-white skin’ and ‘a cape of priceless old lace’. This exterior ensures that Hastings (and, perhaps, the reader) never suspects that Miss Penn might be the ‘masculine woman’ who sold the ‘stolen’ miniatures to J. Baker Wood.

In the TV episode, Miss Penn uses a wheelchair, and this serves as the reason Hastings doesn’t suspect her. However, she does seem like she could disguise herself as a ‘masculine woman’. Even in the chair, her height is apparent, and she’s been divested of the frilly, lacy, pink-and-white innocence of her literary counterpart. (As soon as my husband Rob saw her – bearing in mind he’d never seen a single episode until I started this project – he pointed at the screen and shouted ‘It was her!’) Turns out a fake wheelchair is a much weaker disguise than simply ‘being a little old lady’.

The episode makes up for its far-too-obvious Miss Penn with some stunning settings. Maybe it’s because I’m Cumbrian, but I’m glad the programme-makers switched the location to the Lakes (Poirot goes to Devon far too much). The Midland Hotel in Whitcombe is actually the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, and J. Baker Wood’s hotel is being played by the gorgeous mock-Gothic Wray Castle in Ambleside.

Also nice is a little exchange between Hastings and Miss Lemon at the beginning of the episode. After Poirot and Hastings return from the park, the detective continues to grumble. Miss Lemon comments sotto voce that her employer is acting very middle-aged, to which Hastings replies: ‘Well, he’s always been middle-aged. Have you seen that picture of him at his christening?’

Finally, there’s another detail that shows Clive Exton knew his source material well. In Christie’s short story, Poirot explains to Mary Durrant that he will discover the whereabouts of her miniatures:

‘Ah! But it is an idea that! You think I take the rabbits out of the hat? No, mademoiselle. Me, I am the opposite of a conjurer. The conjurer, he makes things disappear. Me, I make things that have disappeared, reappear.’

(That’s right… it’s another reference to conjuring!)

As the TV Poirot refuses the investigate, this little speech is cut from the adaptation. Instead, Poirot simply asks Mary if she knows who he is. She replies:

‘You’re not that conjuror, are you?’

After Poirot’s little hobby in the previous episode, she can be forgiven for making this mistake.

Time to move on though, as these reviews seem to be getting longer and longer. God knows how much I’ll be writing by the time I get to Curtain.

The next episode is ‘The Adventure of the Cheap Flat’

Poirot Project: The Dream (review)

This post is part of my 2016 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘The King of Clubs’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

We’ve reached the end of the first series! I’m woefully behind schedule, so am seriously doubting that I’ll get to Curtain by Christmas – but it’s been so much fun revisiting Series 1 that I don’t mind that this project is probably going to take a lot longer than I envisaged. And I get to end this series with a great episode.

The tenth episode of the first series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 19th March 1989, and was based on the short story of the same name (first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1937, then in The Strand in February of the following year).

The story begins with Poirot arriving at Northway House, the residence of Benedict Farley. Farley is an eccentric millionaire, who lives in a house that is a ‘relic of an earlier age – an age of space and leisure, when green fields had surrounded its well-bred arrogance’. The description of Northway House continues:

‘Now it was an anachronism, submerged and forgotten in the hectic sea of modern London, and not one man in fifty could have told you where it stood.’

This evocative description of the house prepares us for its reclusive inhabitant. Mr Farley is known for his odd habits and erratic behaviour, and his summons to Poirot is characteristically strange. When the detective is shown into Farley’s room (in fact, into his secretary’s room), he discovers that he has been called in to consult on a recurring nightmare – not the detective’s usual fare. Farley has been repeatedly dreaming about shooting himself – always at the same place and the same time. He has consulted three doctors, who have advised him (respectively) that the dream is caused by poor diet, childhood trauma and subconscious suicidal urges. Farley has dismissed all these explanations, and asks Poirot whether it is possible that a murder could be effected through such means. The detective is unable to do much more than rule out hypnotism, so Farley dismisses him.

Naturally, of course, Farley is soon found dead – apparently having committed suicide at the very place and time predicted in his dream. Poirot is called in by his old friend Dr Stillingfleet, as the police have discovered the letter Farley sent requesting a consultation with the detective. Stillingfleet explains that, without this letter, the death would have been recorded as a suicide, but Poirot’s involvement suggests the matter may be more complicated. Additionally, Mrs Farley is able to corroborate the story of the dream, and Farley’s secretary says that he wrote the letter to Poirot on his employer’s instruction.

Because Poirot (and Stillingfleet) are quick to rule out suicide, the reader does so too. This, then, is a murder, which took place in a locked room with no access via window, and which the victim apparently predicted in a series of recurring dreams. It’s a locked room mystery – and I do adore locked room mysteries. (Agatha Christie was no John Dickson Carr and used the ‘locked room’ conceit more sparingly in her stories – but I feel that her Poirot locked rooms do stand up against the acknowledged masters of the subgenre. ‘Problem at Sea’ has always been a favourite of mine, for instance.)

The clues to the trick (for locked room mysteries always rely on a ‘trick’) are to be found in Poirot’s odd meeting with Benedict Farley – the bright lighting of the room, the man’s inability to distinguish between his letter and a letter to Poirot’s laundress, his refusal to let Poirot see the room which is to be the scene of the crime. Some details of the crime scene also help – a pair of ‘lazy-tongs’, the blank wall that faces Farley’s window, the traffic noise from the street below. The detective puts these seemingly random details into a comprehensible order, and the solution is a satisfying one. It’s worth noting, by the way, that there is yet another reference to stage magic in the story: in response to Poirot denying any deception on his part, Benedict Farley chuckles, ‘That’s what the conjuror says before he takes the goldfish out of the hat! Saying that is part of the trick, you know!’

[Update: I wrote the above last night, but then I had a bit of a realization after I slept on it. I seem to remember that I worked out the solution of ‘The Dream’ when I first watched it. And I was only ten at the time. This possibly means that the ‘trick’ isn’t particularly sophisticated, or that it’s easy to spot its workings. However, ‘The Dream’ will always have a special place in my heart for this reason, as it’s the locked mystery I cut my teeth on.]

The TV adaptation was written by Clive Exton and directed by Edward Bennett. As is usual with Exton’s adaptations, it’s fairly faithful to Christie’s short story. Like many of the other earlier episodes, the ‘family’ are added to the story – Miss Lemon, Hastings and Japp aren’t in Christie’s story – but their inclusion is a little less clunky than in some other episodes. Miss Lemon has a little sub-storyline about a broken typewriter, and Japp neatly replaces Inspector Barnett, the ‘tame police inspector’ of the short story. The inclusion of Hastings necessarily downgrades Dr Stillingfleet (played by Paul Lacoux) from his role as the ‘Watson’ character, but I guess that’s a sacrifice that has to be made.

The TV version of Farley is fairly close to his literary counterpart. However, the eccentric is now the owner of a successful pie factory, rather than being something vaguely connected to transport. Unlike in Christie’s story, we get more of a sense of Farley at work – a Pathé Gazette newsreel introduces us to Farley’s Pies, and we see the owner addressing his workforce on the factory’s fiftieth anniversary. This Benedict Farley is a more straightforwardly obnoxious man. Christie’s short story mentions the millionaire’s ‘strange meanesses’, but also his ‘incredible generosities’; it is only the ‘meanesses’ (his attempts to block unionization, his dismissal of his daughter’s boyfriend) that are on show in the adaptation. But we still get no real sense of the man outside a few glimpses and reports from others, which is very much in-keeping with the original story.

Like ‘The Incredible Theft’ and ‘The King of Clubs’, the episode features some fantastic location shots. In this case, it’s the use of the Hoover Building in Perivale, which doubles as Farley’s factory. Like the other iconic buildings used in these early episodes, the art deco Hoover Building is both dramatically stylized and contemporary to the show’s setting (it was built in 1933). Unlike the other buildings, though, it’s now a branch of Tesco.

Weirdly, given that I really like both the episode and the short story, I find that I have a lot less to say about ‘The Dream’ than some other instalments. It’s just a neat little puzzle that was faithfully adapted for the screen. There are some nice interactions between Poirot and Miss Lemon (particularly the detective’s enthusiasm after Miss Lemon’s strange time-keeping leads him to his solution, and his final (misguided) thank you gift). And I like Poirot’s lamenting that his little grey cells have been ‘weakened by the old age and the fast living’ (which Hastings questions, but is informed that Poirot did indeed live fast in his youth). The episode sees the welcome (well, welcome to me) return of Dicker (played by George Little), the concierge of Whitehaven Mansions, who is the show’s most minor recurring character.



Since it’s the final episode of the series, it’s only fitting that we have one last chase scene as well. As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, the (silly) chase scenes are a regular feature of the early series, taking place on foot, by car and by boat. In ‘The Dream’, we round off the series with a motorbike-and-sidecar heading in hot pursuit of the murderer – complete with a dramatic leap from the driving seat to apprehend the fugitive.

And that brings me to the end of the first series – making me ten episodes closer to finally watching Curtain. It seems sort of fitting to end this review with a quote from Christie’s ‘The Dream’, I think:

‘“I wonder if you’ll ever commit a crime, Poirot?” said Stillingfleet. “I bet you could get away with it all right. As a matter of fact, it would be too easy for you – I mean the thing would be off as definitely too unsporting.” “That,” said Poirot, “is a typical English idea.”’

Onwards, then, to Series 2…

POSTSCRIPT:

As I said, I adore locked room mysteries. To hear more about some of my favourite examples of the genre (including a couple of Agatha Christie’s mysteries), have a listen to the radio show I did on this subject last year:

Poirot Project: Triangle at Rhodes (review)

This post is part of my 2016 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘The Third Floor Flat’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

Two phrases always spring to mind when I think of this episode: ‘unnecessary snake’ and ‘awesome drink’. To explain the first, I have a very visceral, physical phobia of snakes – even thinking about them makes me feel a bit nauseous and weak at the knees – and am slightly annoyed by the fact that TV shows and films aren’t required to warn you about snake appearances. I put this phobia down to the fact that, when I was eight, we moved to an area near a nature reserve that had adders, and so suddenly I was confronted by (what seemed like) terrifying signs everywhere warning me about the forest of snakes that lay on the other side of our garden fence. I haven’t been able to look at snakes since. Fortunately, I’ve seen this episode enough times now to know exactly when to look away from the screen, and simply listen to Poirot deliver a portentous comment on human nature, inspired by the discovery of a viper. And more on the awesome drink shortly…

‘Triangle at Rhodes’ was first broadcast on 12th February 1989; it was directed by Renny Rye and written by Stephen Wakelam. As with ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’, Clive Exton acted as script consultant – there’s a great blog post about Exton’s contribution to the Poirot series here, by the way. The episode was based on the short story of the same name, which was first published in This Week in February 1936. It also appeared in The Strand, published as ‘Poirot and the Triangle at Rhodes’ in May 1936. In the story, Poirot has taken a holiday to the ‘white sand’ and ‘sparkling blue water’ of Rhodes. And just to note, in the story and adaptation, Rhodes is still part of the Isole Italiane dell’Egeo (so, an Italian island rather than a Greek one): there’s a little joke about this in the episode, when Douglas Gold (played by Peter Settelen) proclaims that he hadn’t known where Rhodes was before they arrived, noting that it ‘turns out it’s Itai’. Back to the short story though, befriended by the bubbly Pamela Lyall and Sarah Blake, Poirot engages in a gentle bit of people-watching, observing the ostentatious Valentine Chantry and the mousy Marjorie Gold (and the women’s respective husbands). He quickly recognizes the pattern that he sees in his fellow holiday-makers’ interactions, sketching the shape of a triangle into the sand.

Despite giving a stern warning to Marjorie Gold – ‘Leave this place at once – before it is too late’ – Poirot is unable to prevent the inevitable tragedy from occurring. Valentine Chantry is murdered, just as (it transpires) Poirot had feared. In a quirky deviation from the usual formula, Poirot has already noted all the significant clues prior to the murder taking place, so the ‘reveal’ comes quite quickly after Valentine’s demise. He is asked by a shocked Pamela why he did nothing to stop events transpiring, and makes a typically Hercule pronouncement:

‘And say what? What is there to say – before the event? That someone has murder in their heart? I tell you, mon enfant, if one human being is determined to kill another human being –’

In a lot of ways, ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ has much in common with Evil Under the Sun (first published in 1941), and some people have seen the later novel as an expansion of the short story. There are certainly a couple of recycled features (as well as a plot point that had previously been used in Lord Edgware Dies), but personally I prefer to think of the two as discrete texts. Perhaps this is because I really like both of them, and because the characters in both are rather distinctive.

On to the adaptation (because it’s starting to look unlikely that I’m going to get to Curtain by Christmas unless I get a wriggle on)… the episode begins with an overcast shot of Whitehaven Mansions. A postman arrives with mail for 56B (the address used for Poirot’s flat in the TV series – I’ll return to the question of Poirot’s address in a later post), concierge Dicker (portrayed by George Little, in his second appearance in the role) tells him not to bother: ‘they’re all on holiday’. Thus, we’re set up for the first episode that doesn’t feature Japp, Hastings or Miss Lemon, and also the first episode to take place overseas. While Hastings has ‘gone off shooting things’ and Miss Lemon is visiting her sister in Folkestone, we follow Poirot to the ‘white sand’ and ‘sparkling blue water’ of the Mediterranean.

As with the previous episode, the central mystery follows the short story quite closely. The means, motive and perpetrator of the murder are almost identical to those in the source text – though the nature of the poison used is different, which leads to some additional post-murder investigation that is not found in the short story. A number of other changes have been made; some of these are rather superficial, but some are more substantial.

The characters of Pamela and Sarah are conflated into one, Pamela Lyall (played by Frances Low). The TV version of Pamela latches on to Poirot when he rescues her from the over-attentive Major Barnes (Timothy Kightley). Poirot appears here as a sort of avuncular figure, a role he’ll reprise again in other stories, and it’s in-keeping with the show’s repeated suggestion that Poirot is very comfortable in the company of women. In the short story, Poirot seems somewhat less avuncular and even more comfortable in the women’s company. The story gives no indication of how or why Pamela and Sarah have befriended the detective, but simply opens with a ‘dandified’ Poirot (in ‘white flannels and a large panama hat’) happily sitting on the beach with a young woman who is ‘wearing the barest minimum of clothing on her sun-browned person’. He’s a bit of player, is Poirot.

In fact, one thing I did notice on rereading the short story is that the TV episode is far coyer about the opening/early sunbathing scene. In Christie’s text, Pamela is scantily dressed and Valentine has ‘slip[ped] the straps of the white bathing-dress from her shoulders’ in order to tan more completely. In the adaptation, Pamela (presented as a borderline spinster, rather than a flirtatious young girl) is more modestly dressed and Valentine’s straps stay resolutely in place. Given that a number of the later episodes introduce sex scenes that aren’t present in Christie’s books, this coyness in an early episode is quite charming.

As I say, other alterations are a bit more substantial. Christie’s General Barnes, ‘a veteran’ who serves as little more than an additional guest with whom Poirot passes a little time, becomes Major Barnes, a suspiciously overfamiliar man who claims to be in Rhodes for the fishing. I’m not a huge fan of the Major Barnes subplot in ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ – it feels too much like padding and doesn’t really add anything apart from a red herring and a silly maritime chase scene. There is also a deviation involving Poirot’s abortive attempt to leave the island. As his holiday has come to an end, Poirot tries to board a boat at the harbour; however, he is detained by customs officials and accused of being a spy.

While the Major Barnes subplot is a bit pointless, the customs incident does serve some purpose other than padding, and it needs a little explaining. Chronology in Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories is a tricky thing, and it doesn’t always run smoothly. The stories and novels have shifting settings, with contemporary mores and references often making it hard to pinpoint the timeline of Poirot’s life (and making the detective, who had already had a full and successful police career in Belgium by the outbreak of World War I, very very old by the time of his death). Moreover, mores and styles shift with time, and this is reflected through the course of the books, making the decades that divide ‘The Third Floor Flat’ from Third Girl (for instance) very apparent. The makers of the TV show, therefore, had a difficult decision to make about chronology and setting. Do they adapt the stories in the order they were written? Or in a reflection of the stages of Poirot’s career? And should the timeline follow a logical aging of Poirot starting at his arrival in England during WWI? Or set each book at the time of writing, making Poirot’s implausible longevity more obvious?

The programme makers decided to take a different approach, which results in a rather trippy experience of time in the series. With the exception of The Mysterious Affair at Styles (set during WWI), ‘The Chocolate Box’ (set, partially, in flashback to Poirot’s career in Belgium) and Curtain (to be set in the 1940s), the producers set out with the intention of setting all episodes in 1935-36 (or thereabouts). This doesn’t hold strictly true, and some of the later feature-length episodes deviate a little from this, but the majority of episodes are indeed set at some point between about 1935 and 1939. Some fans have found this to be rather frustrating, and at least one person has gone to some lengths to divine a more detailed chronology for the cases featured in the series. I’m happier to simply accept that – like Heartbeat – this is a show pretty much permanently set in one particular year, with a coherent aesthetic inspired by this setting.

This perma-35 setting has a significant result. The world of Agatha Christie’s Poirot is always on the brink of World War II, but never quite there. Fascism is always on the rise; international relations are always unstable; political beliefs and allegiances are always under suspicion. There will be other episodes that deal more directly with the threat of Nazism, invasion and trauma, but ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ gives us our first taste of this recurrent theme. Rhodes is peppered with Italian blackshirts; Major Barnes gives a stark warning about the world being ‘on the brink of war’; and Poirot’s apprehension at customs has sinister overtones. All this serves to heighten Poirot’s role as an embodiment of (perhaps futile) order in a world about to descend into chaos.

There’s probably a lot more I could say about ‘Triangle at Rhodes’. It’s always been an episode that’s fascinated me, but I don’t want to risk turning this review into a full-blown essay. So I’ll end with a comment on that ‘awesome drink’.

As I’ve mentioned before, I was only ten when this first series aired, so my memories of watching individual episodes for the first time are a little patchy. What seems to have happened is that certain details stuck in my mind, even if the plot and solution faded away. Like the ‘white slavers’ in ‘The Adventure of the Clapham Cook’ and the bowl of cherries song in ‘The Third Floor Flat’, the means used to deliver the poison in ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ lodged itself firmly in my young mind.

In both the TV episode and the original short story, Valentine Chantry is killed by a poisoned pink gin. As a child, I was intrigued by this drink, which Valentine (played by Annie Lambert) repeatedly demands throughout the episode, and it seemed to fit with the glamourous 1930s Mediterranean setting. Then, when I was an older teenager, the drink took on an added layer of allure, as I realized that I’d never heard a reference to pink gin in anything other than Poirot. It wasn’t a drink that you could get in the pub; it wasn’t something that my friends or family drank. Pink gin started to take on something of a mythical quality for me, and I was sure that I would one day discover the secret. (This was in the 1990s, by the way, so I couldn’t just Google it.) Finally, when I was about twenty, I worked in a pub that had an old cocktail book gathering dust under the bar, and I finally discovered the elusive ingredients of a pink gin: it’s just Plymouth gin with a dash of Angostura bitters. While this discovery might sound a bit anti-climactic, I was delighted. I immediately embarked on a night of celebration with my new-found tipple.

Probably best to gloss over the details of that night, but suffice to say, come the next morning, I did not look as glamourous as Valentine Chantry.

To bring this review to a close, then, ‘Triangle at Rhodes’ has its problems as an adaptation, but it’s always been an episode that’s close to my heart. For me, it was one of the more memorable episodes of the first series, and it introduces Poirot as the international traveller with an eye for the wickedness in human nature. It’s also the first episode of the series to rely on a really really important ‘rule’ of Agatha Christie’s fiction… but I’m not sure I want to say what that is, as once you know the rule an awful lot of detective fiction is spoilt (so let’s just call it the Peril at End House rule).

Time to move on, though. Next up, it’s ‘Problem at Sea’.

Poirot Project: The Third Floor Flat (review)

This post is part of my 2016 Poirot Project. You can read the full story of why I’m doing this in my Introduction post. The previous post was a review of ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’.

Beware: Here be Spoilers

The fifth episode of the first series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot was first broadcast on 5th February 1989. It was directed by Edward Bennett and written by Michael Baker. The episode was based on the short story of the same name, which was first published in Hutchinson’s Story Magazine in 1929.

Christie’s short story opens with a group of fashionable young things returning to Friars Mansions from a night out, only to discover their hostess, Patricia Garnett, has lost her latchkey. The two men of the party decide to use the service lift to get into Pat’s kitchen (she lives in a flat on the fourth floor of the apartment block), but they miscount the floors and stumble into a third floor flat instead. And something in that third floor flat isn’t right…

Poirot enters the story in a rather odd way, which serves to raise more questions than it answers. When Pat’s friends, Donovan and Jimmy, return to the third floor flat and discover the body of its resident (Mrs Ernestine Grant), they realize they have to call the police; as they discuss this, a man appears behind them:

‘They stood staring at the little man with a very fierce moustache and an egg-shaped head. He wore a resplendent dressing-gown and embroidered slippers. He bowed gallantly to Patricia.’

This is, of course, our Belgian detective – but his next statement is, to say the least, a little baffling:

‘I am, as perhaps you know, the tenant of the flat above. I like to be up high – in the air – the view over London. I take the flat in the name of Mr O’Connor. But I am not an Irishman. I have another name.’

Why has Poirot been living in this apartment block under the name of Mr O’Connor? Why has he been pretending to be an Irishman? We never find out – but the image is rather charming. Having revealed his true identity, he proceeds to investigate the scene of the crime, partake of an omelette cooked by Pat, put together the clues he discovers, and reveal the murderer of Mrs Grant.

It’s a neat story, with a nice little piece of misdirection at its heart. And the TV episode is a fairly close adaptation, which retains much more subtlety to its clueing than some of the previous episodes.

The TV version moves the location to Whitehaven Mansions (Poirot’s home), thus removing the bizarre Friars Mansions/O’Connor subplot, and adds the usual ‘family’ of Japp, Hastings and Miss Lemon. In this version of the story, Poirot is suffering from a cold (something he merely pretends to in the short story), and Hastings takes him out to the theatre to cheer him up. The play that they go to see, The Deadly Shroud, is a murder mystery, and the two men make a £10 wager that Poirot can solve the mystery by the end of the first act. This is quite a charming touch – a bit more of the Poirot-and-Hastings bonding that is such a key feature of the early series – made even better by the fact that Poirot loses the bet (he believes the butler did it). When the men return from the theatre, they find Pat (Suzanne Burden) and Mildred (Amanda Elwes) locked out of their flat; Donovan (Nicholas Pritchard) and Jimmy (Robert Hines) soon arrive to announce their gruesome discovery.

As a little anecdotal note, I do remember watching and enjoying this episode when it was first broadcast (I was ten at the time). In particular, I remember being quite taken by the service lift the men use to get into the apartment – and, of course, I wasn’t the only person to fall in love with the Whitehaven Mansion sets used in the series – but also by the song Pat and Mildred sing on the stairs as they wait for Donovan and Jimmy. When I was older, I found out that this is quite a well-known song: ‘Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries’ by Ray Henderson and Lew Brown. The song was first performed by Ethel Merman in 1931, so its use here is a nice way of presenting Pat and Mildred as bright young modern things.

Unlike in the previous episode, the details of the mystery are unchanged in the adaptation. Some scenes that are described very briefly in the story are shown visually (and a little differently) in the episode. For instance, Pat mentions that she thinks Mrs Grant has requested a meeting with her because she wants to complain about the noise of Pat’s piano; in the TV episode, we see Pat and Mildred dancing to music from a gramophone, which appears to lead Mrs Grant (played by a rather underused Josie Lawrence) to post a note through her door. However, these little changes do nothing to alter the overall arc or the subtlety of the clues.

Much of the characterization also remains the same in the adaptation. One lovely detail is to be found when Pat cooks Poirot an omelette. In both the story and the episode, this leads Poirot to wistfully comment that, once, he fell in love with an English girl who was very like Pat – except that she couldn’t cook, so he knew it wasn’t meant to be. This is the first of several references to Poirot’s thwarted love life that add a slightly sad air to his character: unlike for Sherlock Holmes, it seems there was more than just ‘one woman’ for Hercule. (Alternatively, perhaps, he is making up the beautiful English girl who couldn’t cook in order to charm and flatter Pat. In which case, and this is a distinct possibility, Poirot is an incorrigible flirt!)

When I wrote about ‘The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly’, I mentioned the ‘car porn’ that is used in these early episodes – and this episode has plenty of shots of Hastings’s gleaming Lagonda. Unfortunately, the Lagonda gets caught up in the episode’s obligatory chase scene, leading to heartbreak for Hastings. While the climactic chases are usually faintly silly in these early episodes, I always find this one to be a bit different. Hastings’s response to the destruction of his beloved car is genuinely moving, and Poirot’s sympathetic response is very sweet.

There are a couple of other points to note about this episode. It is the first of four (well, technically five) episodes to feature George Little as minor recurring character Dicker, the concierge of Whitehaven Mansions. We also have a couple of good Miss Lemon and Inspector Japp moments that expand on their relationship with Poirot. For the former, this comes when Poirot is laid low with a cold, and she is tasked with ensuring (or takes it upon herself to ensure) that the Belgian sleuth is well-dosed with Friar’s Balsam. For the latter, it’s in a little scene where Poirot attempts to persuade the policeman to let him search the murder victim’s flat – Poirot does this entirely via facial expressions, and Japp’s resigned acceptance of this manipulation is endearing.

Ultimately, this is a very good episode. For me, it strikes the perfect balance of recreating the original story and sticking to the format of the early TV series. And, like quite a few episodes, it has a classic Japp line delivered perfectly by Philip Jackson. When he arrives to investigate the murder at Whitehaven Mansions, our long-suffering policeman shoots his friend a mischievous look: ‘You’ll be having murders in your back bedroom next, Poirot.’

Next episode: ‘Triangle at Rhodes’