Poirot and Me (11 page)

changes – and Poirot’s cold disappears –

when a body is found in the flat two floors

below Poirot’s, number 36B. The victim was

played by the comedienne Josie Lawrence in

one of her first straight television roles.

Most important of all, however, is the fact

that the heroine of the story, played by

Suzanne Burden, makes Poirot a ‘fluffy

omelette’ during his investigation, which only

serves to remind him, and me, of his

repressed love for a young Englishwoman in

his past who once also made him ‘fluffy

omelettes’.

But what did those omelettes mean for a

man like Poirot? I think they were a sign that

he could only love at a distance, at one

remove, rather than as a red-blooded man.

Dame Agatha could not and did not allow

him to cross the barrier and release himself

into a full relationship with a woman

because it would have proved too great a

threat to his personality. Poirot could admire,

even ‘love’, a woman, but it would always be

from a distance, and I understood that

instinctively, although it is not a feeling I

share.

Those omelettes were a symbol of his

remoteness, underlining the fact that Poirot

was well aware of the fact that Suzanne’s

character reminded him of the love he could

never quite have, and that affected me

deeply. Once again, it helped me to

understand his deep regret at never having

truly experienced love, even though Dame

Agatha did allow him a relationship with the

dramatic Russian Countess Rossakoff, but

one which was also destined to disappear

into the wind.

What was so charming was that Suzanne,

and every other actor and actress who came

into the series, were genuinely thrilled to be

in a Poirot story. They all seemed to have

known and read Poirot as a child, whereas I

didn’t know him at all to begin with, even

though I was becoming him more completely

every single day.

The sixth and seventh films in the first

series underlined exactly how much money

London Weekend was spending. Triangle at

Rhodes was set on the Greek island, and the

whole unit was transported there. For the

next, Problem at Sea, everyone stayed in the

Mediterranean, while Poirot took a cruise on

a magnificent 1930s motor yacht, and we

visited another group of beautiful, exotic

locations.

In fact, those two stories reflected Dame

Agatha’s own fascination with travel and

adventure, and helped to set the series far

apart from some of the other British fiction of

the time, most of which seemed landlocked

in Britain.

I n Triangle at Rhodes Poirot uses a little

wooden doll that belonged to a child, who

was one of the characters, while in Problem

at

Sea

he

reveals

an

interest

in

ventriloquism. Both only increased the

pressure on me to make sure that I could

carry those vital scenes at the end of the film

to satisfy every single person in the

television audience.

One thing I knew was that Dame Agatha

always made sure that all the clues were

there for everyone to see – if only they

looked for them. If you did grasp them all,

then you would know who did it; if not, you

would have to wait for Poirot to tell you. It

was one of her greatest qualities as a writer

– she was always honest with her readers –

and I wanted to be equally honest with her

viewers. They had to feel that they might

have reached the same conclusion as Poirot

if they had put all the clues together;

although they knew, in their hearts, that

although they might have noticed one or

two, Poirot saw them all – which was why he

was a great detective.

The Incredible Theft, which was the eighth

film,

demonstrated

yet

again

the

extraordinary lengths that Brian Eastman

and London Weekend went to in order to

find exactly the right backgrounds and props.

The story revolves around a maverick aircraft

manufacturer and his designs for a new

fighter in 1936, because there is ‘so much at

stake for England’ as the possibility of a

second European war looms.

The fact that the producers found so many

vintage planes to illustrate the story was

extraordinary enough, but the cast was

every bit as special, with John Stride as the

maverick millionaire and John Carson as the

politician Sir George Carrington.

I found myself explaining the nature of the

‘theft’ of a critical page of the aircraft’s

design at the denouement, this time in a

wonderful country house. In fact, the Poirot

stories were most often set in the homes of

the landed aristocracy or millionaires,

although The Adventure of the Clapham

Cook demonstrated that he both could and

did work with the rather less affluent.

Nonetheless, Poirot does not take the wealth

of those around him too seriously. He takes

some considerable pleasure in gently poking

fun at the foibles of the English aristocracy,

often ridiculing their insistence on respecting

‘good chaps’.

This is one of the great charms of Poirot’s

investigations, for they reveal a world where

manners and morals are quite different from

today. There are no overt and unnecessary

sex scenes, no alcoholic, haunted detectives

in Poirot’s world. He lives in a simpler, some

would say more human, era: a lost England,

seen through the admiring eyes of this

foreigner, this little Belgian detective. For

me, that makes the stories all the more

appealing, for although the days he lives in

seem far away, they are all the more

enchanting because of it.

The last stories for the first series were

The King of Clubs, about the death of a film

producer, which starts with Poirot visiting a

film set – which, of course, was created at

Twickenham Studios, next to our own set –

a n d The Dream, about a famous pie

manufacturer who is killed in a locked room

in his flat above the factory. The cast were

as tremendous as they had been throughout,

including Niamh Cusack as a film actress in

the story about the movie mogul, and my old

colleague from the Royal Shakespeare

Company

Alan

Howard

as

the

pie

manufacturer. His daughter was played by

the delightful Joely Richardson, in one of her

first television appearances.

The Dream was the last to be shot, and

we finished just a few days before Christmas

1988. By then, I had discovered that London

Weekend had scheduled the films to start on

the Sunday night exactly two weeks after

Christmas Day, on 8 January 1989. The ten

we had shot that year were to go out every

Sunday evening thereafter at 8.45 p.m.,

ending on 19 March.

I honestly had no idea how they were

going to turn out. In fact, I was privately

rather frightened that they might be boring. I

remember thinking to myself that these films

were

not

action-packed

like The

Professionals or The Sweeney, both hugely

successful in their time, nor were they

comparable to the more recent Morse and

Wexford series. Were they going to be

entertaining enough for an audience in

1989?

‘I’m afraid they’re going to be too tame, or

too eccentric,’ I thought to myself.

At that end of the final day of shooting in

December 1988, we had a party for the crew

and regular members of the cast at

Twickenham. Brian Eastman made a little

speech, and then so did I. What I said

precisely reflected my private uncertainty.

‘I really have no idea whether Poirot will

work,’ I told everyone that evening. ‘Possibly

it won’t, and so there might never be

another series, which is why I want to say

thank you to everybody here for all you’ve

done to make it such a wonderful

experience.’

What I did know, however, was that I had

never been more tired in my acting career. I

walked off the set on that final night utterly

exhausted. I was barely off the screen

throughout almost 500 minutes of prime-

time television – working fourteen-and

fifteen-hour days, and I could hardly think.

Sean took me home to our new house in

Pinner, and I all but collapsed. Christmas

was not quite cancelled, but it was jolly close

to it, though I made every effort not to show

it for the sake of the children. But Sheila

knew.

All we had to do now was to wait and see

what the reaction would be.

Yet, in my heart, I was afraid that no more

films were going to be made, and that

meant that I was going to have to say

goodbye to the little Belgian whom I had

grown so incredibly fond of. We had become

so close that the pain of losing him would be

almost too much to bear.

Chapter 5

‘IT WAS LIKE BEING

HIT OVER THE HEAD

WITH A MALLET’

We had a family Christmas. Robert and

Katherine were still quite young, and

both my parents, as well as Sheila’s mother,

were still alive, so there was plenty to keep

us occupied. But in the back of my mind, I

could not stop thinking about Poirot. I was

gradually recovering from the strain of

filming, but I still wondered what the

audience would think.

The publicity for the series started

immediately after the holiday, and I

suddenly found myself doing interview after

interview about playing the role, without

really knowing whether it worked on the

screen. I was fascinated to know what the

audience were being told about the nature of

my work, and what the journalists I was

meeting thought about the films themselves,

as they’d seen at least the first episode in a

preview, as they usually do. Thankfully,

many of them were kind enough to tell me

how good they thought it was.

That came as something of a relief, as I

had not seen any of the films in their

entirety. Brian Eastman had shown me bits

of the filming here and there, when there

was something we specifically needed to

discuss, but the schedule was so tight that

there was no time for me to sit down and

look at every film as it was completed.

Nevertheless, as the days passed, and the

first showing came ever closer, I got my first

clue about how Agatha Christie’s Poirot had

turned out.

On the Friday morning of 6 January 1989 a

piece by the veteran entertainment writer

David Lewin appeared in the Daily Mail

which said, very flatteringly, ‘David Suchet

has become Britain’s first character actor star

on television.’ He had been one of the first

people I talked to during the run of publicity

after Christmas.

David then went on to compare me to Sir

Alec Guinness, who was more famous for the

characters he played than for his own

personality – not least in the great Ealing

comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets and David

Lean’s Bridge on the River Kwai. It was a

great compliment, as I had always been an

admirer of Guinness and his work, but to be

mentioned in the same breath was a little

overwhelming.

But when Sheila and I sat down together

to watch The Adventure of the Clapham

Cook go out on that Sunday evening in

January 1989, we still really did not know

what I would be like, how the series would

look, or what the reaction would be. Even

after we watched it, I wasn’t exactly sure

whether the audience would like it.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Sheila.

‘It’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘And so were you.

It will be a tremendous success.’

I’m not sure I believed her. After all, this

was only my second outing in a high-profile

television