Poirot and Me (18 page)

Weekend suddenly decided that they were

indeed going to do a third series of Poirot,

starting in late June, and asked me to play

the role again.

For a moment, I was in turmoil. If only

they could have asked me earlier! If I went

straight on from Timon to Poirot, I was going

to be in grave danger of driving myself too

hard and weakening my ability to perform as

well as I wanted to. But what could I do?

London Weekend made the offer just as

the second Poirot series was coming to an

end in England, in March 1990, and I was

rehearsing Timon. The recent success of the

first series in the United States and the fact

that it had sold well in Europe (Germany had

now taken it too) had more than a little to

do with the decision to commission a new

set of Poirot, I suspect. In the end, I felt that

I had no choice. I decided to play the little

man again – I wanted to very much, and the

opportunity was too good to turn down. So I

agreed to start filming a third series of Poirot

immediately after I had finished Timon of

Athens in the West End, even though it

meant that I would have no time to rest

before starting the pre-production of the

series. It also meant that I would have been

working virtually non-stop throughout the

year.

On one level, it is a wonderful thing to be

given the chance to work, but on another

level, I knew it was going to be both

mentally and physically exhausting. Would

that hurt my performance as Poirot? I did not

think it would, but I would have to wait and

see.

In the meantime, there was Timon of

Athens to be launched. Thankfully, my

approach to the play seemed to work for the

audience,

because

the

reviews

were

excellent and the theatre was full – some of

the audience no doubt tempted by the

possibility of seeing Poirot on stage. But it

was a long piece, of almost three hours, and

the second act in particular was all

consuming. I left the theatre at the end of

eight performances each week absolutely

drained – though very satisfied with what I

had achieved.

In fact, though I did not realise it for a

time, Timon helped to establish me as an

actor who could bring an audience into the

theatre, and I was enormously grateful to

the part for that.

No sooner had the run at the Young Vic

finished, than I was back at Twickenham

Studios in pre-production for Poirot, though

certainly not feeling quite as fresh as I had

when I’d started two summers before.

By chance, just as we started work on the

new series, another of my television

performances – playing a tortured William

Shakespeare in a production of Edward

Bond’s Bingo – was broadcast, confirming

the fact that I was certainly not only playing

my little Belgian friend.

Once again, a television magazine kindly

described me as ‘fast becoming the Alec

Guinness of his generation – the man with a

face for every character’. Again, I was very

flattered, but I did not have time to bask in

the glory. I was too busy getting back into

my padding and spats, not to mention a new

set of moustaches.

The first film in the new series, all of which

were once again based on Dame Agatha’s

short stories, was How Does Your Garden

Grow? Poirot is to have a rose named after

him at the Chelsea Flower Show of 1935,

and while there, he meets an elderly lady in

a wheelchair who gives him a packet of

seeds with the words, ‘I’m sure you will find

them quite a revelation.’ Shortly afterwards,

she dies in agony in front of the camera,

another bold move by the producers, and –

just like Mrs Inglethorp at Styles – it turns

out that she has been poisoned. Suddenly

Poirot finds himself investigating her death

at a Surrey house filled with memorabilia

from the Russian Orthodox Church, as one of

the suspects is a Russian émigré.

Published in Poirot’s Early Cases in both

Britain and the United States in 1974, not

long before Dame Agatha’s death, it is one

of her slighter stories, which needed to be

expanded in the script to make it even better

for a television audience. To be honest, not

every single one of her short stories was

easily adaptable to the small screen. Some

needed one or two extra ingredients to help

them along. It was all done with a little

sleight of hand, in this case by the

screenwriter Andrew Marshall, to make her

stories even more enjoyable.

One of the extra ingredients in the first

film is a little sub-plot about Poirot’s new

aftershave lotion, which contrives to give

Hastings what seems like hay fever, but

turns out to be an allergy to the lotion itself.

The gentle depiction of Poirot’s vanity and

the confusion about what is causing Hastings

to sneeze all the time is one of the film’s

most charming elements.

The Million Dollar Bond Robbery, the

second film, was another of the slighter

stories, although it does involve Poirot

overcoming his fear of sea-sickness when he

and Hastings are required to travel to New

York on the maiden voyage of the new

Cunard

liner, Queen Mary. In the end,

though, it is Hastings, not Poirot, who

succumbs to mal de mer, much to the

detective’s delight.

Directed by Andrew Grieve, who would go

on to become one of the regulars on the

Poirot films, it focuses on the theft of one

million dollars’ worth of bonds from a locked

box on the ship as it sails across the Atlantic.

Andrew used a great deal of black and white

newsreel footage of the original maiden

voyage to give his film a firm period flavour

and to flesh out the story a little more.

The third film, The Plymouth Express, was

a revelation, because it underlined just how

much the Poirot series could now attract

some of the finest actors in the profession.

The cast included the exceptional Kenneth

Haigh, who was the original Jimmy Porter in

John Osborne’s ground-breaking drama Look

Back in Anger in 1956. I had known him in

the theatre, and was immensely pleased

that he accepted the part of a deceiving

‘fence’ in the story. He was a great addition

to the cast.

But it wasn’t just established actors that

were attracted to the new Poirot series; the

films also featured great actors who would

later go on to become stars. That was

certainly true for Wasps’ Nest, the fourth

film, which featured a thirty-something Peter

Capaldi, later to become rightly famous for

his role as the malevolent spin doctor

Malcolm Tucker in the political series The

Thick of It, and has now become the latest

Doctor Who. Scots-born and intensely

charismatic, Peter played the artist Claude

Langton, who is acting as a clown at a

village fete near the beginning of the story,

and he did it beautifully.

The other thing that sticks in my mind

from that film is that I found myself, once

again, standing up for Poirot’s foibles against

the wishes of the film’s director, Brian

Farnham. Brian had set up an enormous

crane shot to look down on the fete and its

fairground, and he wanted Poirot to walk

into the scene, as the camera watches him

from above, and then shout across the

fairground to Hastings.

I just could not do it. I took Brian aside

and told him, ‘I’m so, so sorry, but Poirot just

would not do that. It’s not within his being.

He would never shout across to people; he

would walk all the way over to Hastings

rather than yell at him.’

I felt really badly about it, because here I

was taking a wonderful director’s shot away

from him, and the crew had spent so long

getting it ready, but I simply could not let

Poirot down – no matter how embarrassed I

felt.

Brian was very understanding, and so

were the crew, but it did mean everyone had

to rework the scene to allow me to walk

across and speak to Hastings, as Poirot

would have done. The irony is that in the

short story itself, written by Dame Agatha in

1929, Hastings never appears. He was one

of the additions for the screenplay.

After our debate about that crane shot, I

made a point of always going onto the set in

advance and discussing the camera setup

with Brian, to avoid it ever happening again.

In fact, Wasps’ Nest became one of my

favourite films of the series, not least

because Peter Capaldi turned in such an

extraordinary performance.

In the fifth film, the director, Renny Rye,

who had worked on the first series, allowed

me to indulge Poirot’s obsessions without a

moment’s hesitation. So there I was, once

again, laying my handkerchief on the ground

to allow Poirot to kneel down without

staining his trousers to examine some bird’s

eggs that played their part in the story of a

fictional ‘great crime’ which is, in fact, the

creation of the owner of the local hotel, who

has ambitions to be a crime novelist. Poirot

helps him to find an ending to his story,

while at the same time revealing the truth

behind The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor.

‘Hercule Poirot sees everything and forgets

nothing,’ as he says while solving the murder

at the manor, which seems to have been

caused by a ghost, but, of course, is not. Part

of the delight of the film is that it sees Poirot

discover a waxwork of himself, which both

horrifies and enraptures him at the same

time. I think I would feel rather the same

way if I ever came across a waxwork of me.

I f Wasps’ Nest was one of my favourite

films in the series, there is no doubt that

Double Clue was the most poignant. First

written in 1925, it introduces the one woman

with whom Poirot truly falls in love, the

flamboyant, exotic Countess Vera Rossakoff.

She was to appear in two later Poirot

stories, but this was their first meeting and,

for Poirot – and me – it was never to be

forgotten.

Like Irene Adler for Sherlock Holmes in the

1891 Conan Doyle story A Scandal in

Bohemia, the Countess will always be ‘the

woman’ for Poirot. Yet she does not outwit

him, as Adler did Holmes. Instead, Poirot

allows her to get away with her crimes of

stealing jewels from some of the wealthiest

families in England. He signally does not

hand her over to Chief Inspector Japp, who

has come to him in a state of some

considerable anxiety, so worried is he about

losing his job after failing to catch the thief

at the centre of a string of such high-profile

robberies.

The Countess was played by the striking

actress Kika Markham, who had something

of a reputation at that time for playing

strong women, and she brought exactly the

right amount of glamour and dignity that the

role demanded. She certainly made the

Countess all the more attractive to Poirot.

‘You are the most remarkable, the most

unique woman I have met,’ Poirot tells her,

as the story unfolds. ‘It is crime which has

brought us together.’

Yet Poirot also tells the Countess, with a

deep sadness in his voice, ‘Marriage is not

for me.’ The end of the film has him

effectively saying goodbye to any chance of

love, and – as he waves the Countess away

to a new life in the United States – reveals

that he is condemned to remain wrapped

forever in his own loneliness.

As he helps her leave the country and

escape justice, Poirot and the Countess re-

enact one of the most romantic scenes in the

history of British cinema: the lovers’ parting