In the TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, soldiers charge through the trees, dive onto the ground, and aim at faraway targets with their rifles. Then someone shouts, "Hold your fire," and an elegantly attired foot alights on the fallen leaves beside one soldier. As he looks on, the feet mince past him, and the tip of a walking stick points to a particular plant.
Then a cultured voice lectures, "Another example of the English bucolic beliefs." After stating the Latin name of the plant, which he translates into common English as the Scarlet Pimpernel, he says, "It is believed that when this flower is opened it is a sign of a prolonged spell of fine weather." The camera travels up to Hercule Poirot's face, and he smiles regretfully. "It is seldom open in this country."
As I said in Part 1, this scene does not appear in the novel. It therefore begs the question why Clive Exton, who dramatized it for TV, inserted it. Is it simply about Poirot instructing his fellow Belgian refugees that, as "guests in this country," they must learn the English language, beliefs, and culture, so that they can gain "the confidence of the natives?" Is it intended to demonstrate how Poirot often looks silly to other, as he blithely galavants through a muddy forest, in his formal clothes and delicate shoes, totally oblivious to the war games and the gunfire going on around him?
Or did Exton write it to introduce Poirot into the story far earlier than in Christie's novel?
What do you think?
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