Poirot and Me (13 page)

Here was another strange echo of my life

intertwining with Poirot’s. My father had a

serviced apartment in the Imperial Hotel,

which he and my mother visited regularly. So

the world that Poirot was walking into in

Peril at End House was one that I recognised

immediately, having been there myself with

them in the early 1980s.

At the Majestic, Poirot and Hastings meet

a charming, if slightly anxious, young woman

called ‘Nick’ Buckley, who lives at End House,

high on the cliffs at the edge of town.

Intriguingly for Poirot, she seems to have

survived no fewer than three escapes from

death in the past week, which convinces him

that someone is trying to kill her. She laughs

his theory off as a joke, until her cousin

Maggie is actually killed – perhaps having

been mistaken for her.

Directed by Renny Rye from the first

series, and featuring another of Clive Exton’s

scri pts, End House portrays a world of

women in evening dresses and men in white

tie and tails every night, with exotic cocktails

before dinner, and obligatory ballroom

dancing after it. It also features two of Dame

Agatha’s

familiar,

unlikely

subsidiary

characters, this time a slightly mysterious

Australian couple who help to look after End

House – a wheelchair-bound wife and a

caring husband – whom Poirot describes as

‘almost too good to be true’.

In the wake of the uncomfortable

aeroplane flight, another of Poirot’s foibles

emerges immediately after he arrives in St

Loo, when a waiter at breakfast serves him

two boiled eggs of different sizes, which he

refuses to touch as they offend his very

particular sense of order. I had already put

that down as number forty-two in my list of

character notes: ‘Will often have boiled eggs

for breakfast. If more than one, they must be

the same size or he really can’t eat them.’

Poirot waves them away, but I made sure

that he did so without looking petulant or

silly, for I had made up my mind firmly that

on this second series I would use every

opportunity to make him as human as I

could, no matter how odd his obsessions,

and to reveal him as a warmer man than

perhaps he had appeared in our first ten

films.

Clive Exton’s script certainly helped me.

For he too wanted a little more humour in

the new series, to make Poirot a bit more

moving. It was an excellent idea, even if I

sometimes had to restrain him from going

too far towards making the little Belgian a

comic character, for that certainly was not

the Poirot I knew and wanted to portray. But

at the same time, Clive also brightened both

Hastings and Japp, making them a little less

stiff. All this helped to make the films feel

more affectionate towards Poirot than some

of the first series.

I wanted him to become even more

human. My aim was to draw the audience

even more into his character, so that they

could understand that this idiosyncratic little

man, who may have had his eccentric ways,

was also enormously compassionate and

capable of eliciting information from every

single person he met. He had the great gift

of making people feel flattered by the simple

fact that he was politely talking to them and

took pains to listen to what they had to say

with great intensity.

I believe that if you listen well, you are a

sympathetic person, and this was very much

what I wanted to show in my Poirot. There is

nothing better, to me, than someone who

has the patience to listen carefully, and give

what I call ‘good ear’. As my character note

number twenty-seven said of him, ‘An

excellent

listener.

Often disconcertingly

silent. Lets other people do the talking.’

Taking infinite care to listen and talk to

everyone, regardless of their class or status,

Poirot represents everyman – and he shows

it time after time throughout Dame Agatha’s

stories. He is not Sherlock Holmes,

dismissively lecturing a policeman or a

wealthy landowner about their foolishness.

Poirot cares about people too much for that.

He sympathises with them, and shows that

he does so, in story after story.

The more Poirot welcomes his fellow

characters,

the

more

the

audience

sympathise with him, and the more he

extends his gentle control over everything

around him, as if wrapping it all in his own

personal glow. I believe he is unique in

fictional detectives in that respect, because

he carefully welcomes everyone – be they

reader, viewer, or participant character –

into his drama. He then quietly explains

what it all means and, in doing so, he

becomes what one critic called ‘our dearest

friend’.

That was exactly what I was trying to do,

and so it was very satisfying when the critic

in question, Dany Margolies, put it into

words: ‘In large part it’s the contradictions

Suchet has given the character that make

him so appealing. Poirot dislikes so many

things, so craves perfection in his own life,

yet Suchet’s interpretation feels such deep

caring and empathy for humanity. He is

brilliant,

yet

can

communicate

with

everyone.’

That was my aim for the second series –

to make my Poirot a man you would

welcome to tea, who would not judge you,

but who would listen to you and help you if

you needed it. I think that began to emerge

in Peril at End House.

End House demonstrates Dame Agatha’s

skill as a storyteller, for she always does

something that neither the reader nor the

television audience ever quite expect. Like

an expert magician – a character she

frequently puts into her stories – she knows

how to compel her audience to concentrate

on one thing while she is working her spell

on something else that perhaps they ignore

or miss. She always knows her ending well

before the denouement – and it would

usually never have entered the audience’s

head.

I have to confess at once that, even

though I have become Poirot for millions of

people around the world, even I cannot

always work out the resolution to her

mysteries before she tells me. Dame Agatha

is too clever for me.

That is certainly true of Peril at End House,

which ends in a séance after the reading of

the fragile Miss Buckley’s will. Poirot reveals

the identity of the murderer with a real coup

de théâtre, but only after inviting Miss

Lemon to summon the spirit world. The true

identity of the killer is certainly not obvious

to the audience. They need Poirot to reveal

it. Then they can see the truth, but only after

they have been gently led towards it.

That makes the ending of the story all the

more powerful, when the killer describes

Poirot as a ‘silly little man’ before adding,

‘You don’t know anything,’ when it is only too

clear that he knows everything.

Peril at End House is such a fine mystery

that the actor and playwright Arnold Ridley,

author of The Ghost Train and star of BBC

Television’s Dad’s Army, adapted it for the

stage in 1940 with Francis L. Sullivan as

Poirot. It opened at the Vaudeville Theatre

in May 1940. Sadly it lasted for just twenty-

three performances, in spite of receiving

some positive reviews from the critics.

Perhaps the theatre audience were looking

for somewhat different fare as British troops

were encircled on the French coast near

Dunkirk.

Dame Agatha practises one of her ‘little

deceptions’ on her readers and audience in

Peril at End House – in which a character

comes back to life after apparently dying –

which was to reappear later. There is no

doubt that she would, from time to time,

repeat parts of her plots. That is hardly

surprising, because I don’t believe any writer

could possibly complete more than seventy

stories without repeating themselves. But

that does not dilute for one moment their

capacity to intrigue, for Poirot is always left

to explain the ‘how dunnit’ of the murder

and, even more important, to reveal the

motive – and how the killer’s mind truly

works.

To me, it is precisely this quality that so

appeals to the public’s imagination when

they see Poirot. Dame Agatha challenges her

readers and viewers to exercise their own

‘little grey cells’ over her mysteries. She

plays entirely fair, leaving clues in plain

sight, if only the audience are clever enough

to spot them, but she never, ever, patronises

them.

As the filming of the second series went on

in that summer of 1989, I came to realise

the honesty and truthfulness in Dame

Agatha’s approach more and more. And as a

result, I became ever more determined that

my Poirot should become a man with an

infinite reservoir of empathy for his fellow

human beings, and who wanted the world to

know it. So I worked harder and harder to

humanise him, and as I did so, I think I

became closer and closer to Poirot himself.

Yet even so, we are not totally alike, I

assure you. My strain of perfectionism

certainly matches Poirot’s. In fact, we

seemed to grow more alike in that respect

the more I played him. But I have to admit

that I had a problem with his egotism and

vanity, qualities which I really don’t share

with him. I may be an actor, but I am most

certainly not, I hope, a vain one.

If anything, I suffer from what Sheila and I

both call ‘repertory actor syndrome’. We both

started in rep in the English provinces and

have never forgotten the experience. Rep for

us meant that we were never exactly sure

where the next job – or the next penny –

was coming from, and it made us very aware

of exactly how precarious an actor’s life can

be. As a result, neither Sheila nor I ever take

anything for granted.

It was that worry which paralysed us when

we didn’t know if there was going to be a

second Poirot series. Could we afford to stay

in our new house in Pinner?

But Peril at End House convinced me that

there might just be a future for the little

Belgian detective and me on television, for

here we were making one of Dame Agatha’s

full-length novels, in a stunning set of

locations, with no expense spared – the

vintage aeroplane at the opening was just

one example of that. As the series got

underway, I suddenly found myself thinking,

‘Perhaps we have a future, after all. Here is

London Weekend making an episode that

lasts longer than an hour, and they are

clearly committed to it.’

In fact, Poirot also worries about money.

In The Lost Mine, which was the third in the

new series, the little man insists, ‘No one

makes Poirot look a fool where money is

concerned’ when he is confronted in his bank

by the fact that he has an overdraft, rather

than the precise sum of forty-four pounds

four shillings and four pence which he always

keeps in his current account. Then, in Double

Sin, Poirot announces that he is ‘finished’ and

‘in retirement’ because no one has consulted

him ‘for weeks’.

I knew exactly how he felt. When the

telephone stops ringing and an actor doesn’t

get any offers, he immediately starts to think

of ‘retirement’. ‘No one wants me, so I will

disappear,’ I would say to myself in the dark

days when there were no parts. ‘I can’t bear

to appear to be desperate. I should never

have left Moss Bros.’

Money worries and fears about retirement

were two things that Poirot and I had in

common, but there was another. We both