Poirot's Noteworthy Mustache

In the Agatha Christie's Poirot episode "The Adventure of the Clapham Cook," Hercule Poirot sits in his office with nothing to do. His friend, Captain Hastings, suggests a few mysteries he could devote his little grey cells to. None of these potential cases, including a significant bank theft, interest Poirot in the slightest. Perhaps, the great detective muses, he will trim and pomade his mustache instead.

Pomade is a dense, oily substance that can be used to make hair retain a given shape. In my youth, I knew a young pastor who sported an enormous mustache. While the main part resembled that of Inspector Japp, he teased each side into a spiral covering his lower cheek. His red hair showed off his mustache in spectacular fashion. I wonder if sinners saw the flames of Hell in his mustache, and if it helped attract converts to his ministry?

While not as spectacular as that of my pastor-friend, Albert Finney sported a bigger mustache in the 1970s movie adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. It's a little bigger than that of David Suchet, but not as spectacular as my pastor-friend's.

Leave it to actor, director, producer, and overall British Hollywood heavyweight Kenneth Branagh to go one better. The mustache Branagh sported in the recent movie version of Murder on the Orient Express takes the cake. It's hard to imagine anyone doing a bigger, more elaborate mustache than Branagh. Okay, maybe my red-headed pastor-friend would have been in the running, had he ever tried out for the part. I wonder if audiences would accept a red-headed Poirot?

Incidentally, Poirot needed a special facial apparatus to protect his mustache while he slept in both movies. I wonder if this pastor from my youth needed to strap one of those on his face every evening?

Perhaps the best comparison is between David Suchet's Poirot and that of Peter Ustinov. The latter had a bushy mustache like Inspector Japp, which has just been teased into a point on each side. Compared with Ustinov's, David Suchet's is dainty and stylish. 

Like Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, whom Agatha Christie constantly evoked in her stories, would often fall into the doldrums between cases. He regularly turned down pleas for help that didn't pique his interest. Can you imagine Holmes telling Watson that he would rather attend to his wardrobe, or his personal hygiene, than investigate someone's perplexing mystery? 

While Sherlock Holmes always looked respectable, and perhaps even dashing, Hercule Poirot had a style all his own. Wouldn't you agree, mon ami?

Dragon Dave

Sexism Is Announced

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I visited two used book stores. The first was a small shop in a strip mall. A sign on the door thanked customers for voting them their favorite bookstore in a recent poll. Inside, the shop was packed with books. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases leant the shop a claustrophobic atmosphere, and divided the rental space into rooms. 

A kindly old gentleman greeted me at the door. He welcomed me, and asked if I was looking for anything in particular. When I said I was just browsing, he went on to explain how he had organized his store. Off to one side was Women's Literature. This included Romance and Mysteries. "Mysteries?" I asked.

"Only women read--and with a few exceptions, write--mysteries," he replied. Just as the bookshelves differentiated his shop into little rooms containing different genres, he went on to explain that Men didn't write mysteries, they wrote Suspense Thrillers. Again, he asked for a specific author so he could lead me to the section in which he had placed that author's books. When I deferred a second time, he left me to my own devices. 

Intriguingly, Nonfiction, History, and Classical Literature were all in the Men's half of the store.

I wasn't all that impressed with his selection, or the prices of his well-used paperbacks, so I was all-too-happy to leave after a quick tour of the shop.

The second shop was larger, and part of a chain. The selection was vast, and represented a large number of authors. Salespeople were available, but no one tried to lead me to a specific area. Like the first shop, the prices were a little higher than I prefer to pay for used books, but overall the quality of the books was better. My browsing eventually led me to the Clearance area, where I picked up several Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, as well as a Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie.

At the register, the young counter assistant scanned the old comics and books I had selected. He commented on none of them until he saw the Miss Marple novel. "Ooh, Agatha Christie," he enthused. "She's my favorite author!" He claimed that the novel I had selected, A Murder is Announced was his personal favorite novel. He went on to tell me how Christie occasionally lost him, when she was inundating him with characters at the beginning of a story, but she always made up for it with the quality of her storytelling.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was reading Women's Literature. But then, so am I, apparently.

Dragon Dave

Clive Exton and H.G. Wells

"The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells" begins with a dark and stormy night. An aged H. G. Wells receives a journalist in his library. While he's not inclined to answer her questions, as a gentleman he cannot send her away with a storm raging outside. So he agrees to relate one story from his youth, and then she must leave. 

The esteemed author of such celebrated works as "The Time Machine" and War of the Worlds relates a mysterious event that took place in his youth. As a young man, hunting for ideas, he came across a strange series of events at a London university: an experiment gone wrong, a stack of empty food cans in a cupboard, and laboratory rats that escaped a locked and fastened cage. From these disparate clues, young Wells deduced that a professor has developed a chemical that allowed the user to slow down relative time. 

When Wells and a professor friend find the compound, they take a little of it themselves, and walk across the campus. Everyone else seems frozen. Even a cricket ball has stopped in mid-flight, and hovers over the pitch. These events inspired the author to write the short story "The New Accelerator."

Over the course of three nights, or if you prefer, three episodes, this patriarch of Science Fiction relates the facts that inspired five more of his early stories. His visitor, he soon realizes, is no mere journalist. In fact, she works for a secret government department, specially appointed by Winston Churchill. She takes him to laboratories beneath the streets of London, where he finds artifacts that inspired his early stories. And he tells her about his young love, Jane, who encouraged his writing, and also worked at the university.

These stories lack the production values of "Agatha Christie's Poirot." They venture into the realms of the fantastic, whereas Hercule Poirot only investigated the here and now. But the events of each story are presented as a mystery for a young H. G. Wells to solve.

The series was cowritten by Clive Exton, who adapted many Poirot stories for the screen. They aired in 2001, the same year Exton's final Poirot story, "Murder In Mesopotamia," was broadcast. Did Exton grow tired of Agatha Christie's famous detective, and wished to sink his teeth into another mystery series?  

Sadly, only three episodes of the series were produced. It would have been interesting to have seen how it developed, and if H.G. Wells had somehow helped Churchill defend his nation's shores. At least the series' end left Clive Exton free to write for "Rosemary & Thyme," another charming, light-hearted series about two gardeners who solve mysteries. Those stories aren't Poirot either, but like "The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells," they are infinitely fun.

Dragon Dave

Hyoscine, Amorite, the Mousetrap, and Oh Yes, More Spills!

In Agatha Christie's Poison Garden
Torre Abbey, Torquay, England

In Agatha Christie's play Black Coffee, the Amory family finds a selection of drugs previously kept by Edna, one of Sir Claud Amory's daughters. Like the author, Edna worked in a dispensary during World War I, during which she accumulated this cache. Since the war, Edna has settled in India, while her father Sir Claud, the famed scientist, has worked on a formula to split the atom. 

Among "the spoils of war," as the family members term the collection, they find Iodine, Castor Oil, Morphine, and a drug called Hyoscine. Dr. Carelli, a houseguest, states that an overdose of Hyoscine would bring no pain, but merely a dreamless sleep from which one would never awaken. Lucia, the daughter-in-law of Sir Claud, is seen taking some of the Hyoscine pills. 

After Sir Claud dies, the doctor pronounces that the scientist was poisoned. Naturally, the only thing that stands between Lucia and a murder charge is Hercule Poirot.

Deadly Nightshade, from which Hyoscine is made,
Torre Abbey, Torquay, England

According to Matthew Pritchard, Agatha Christie's grandson, the author wrote Black Coffee in 1929 after a stage adaptation of her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd disappointed her. The play, adapted to novel form by Charles Osborne, offers a unique and interesting insight to the author's views on life, as well as the consciousness of the age. Most of us think of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s as the beginning and end of the development of the atomic bomb. Yet a decade-and-a-half before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, Christie's character Sir Claud is working on a formula for splitting the atom.

While his family view him as stern, stingy, reclusive figure, the world cherishes the scientist as a benefactor, despite the destructive nature of his research. Sir Claud dubs his finished formula Amorite, which seems odd, as most people know that the Spanish word "amor" is translated as love. The world loves Sir Claud Amory, and in return, he will share the fruits of his labor, Amorite, with the world? While making social commentary on human nature, Christie is unknowingly foretelling how the fruits of military researchers will blossom in the future.

As in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Hercule Poirot visits the grand country house. There, he cannot help rearranging unsymmetrical items on a mantlepiece. Again, the item that concerns him most is a spill vase. Every time he enters the room, he sees the spill vase has been moved. At the novel's climax, he connects one of the witnesses' comments with the rolled up scrap paper used to transfer fire from fireplace to fireplace. "What is it I have in this vase?" he asks his friend and companion Hastings.

"Why, spills, of course," Captain Hastings replies.

"No, mon ami, it is cheese," Poirot replies. "You use it to bait a mousetrap."

In the early 1950s, Christie wrote her most famous play. The Mousetrap would go on to become the longest-running play in world history. I've never scene it performed, or read an adaptation. I don't know if it contains Hyoscine, Amorite, or even spills kept in a spill vase above a fireplace. But twenty years earlier, Christie seems to be sowing creative seeds she will reap two decades later when she likens the spills to cheese for a mousetrap.

And as for those paper spills, which people used to save money over the more expensive matches? After Hercule Poirot saves Lucia from a charge of murder, the famous scientist's daughter-in-law lights a match, uses it to burn the spill, and then tosses the burning paper into the fireplace. How's that for taking family story elements, and presenting them in a new and interesting way?

Dragon Dave

Danger At Beacon Cove Part 4

The image of Agatha Christie as a daredevil was not one I expected to find when I visited her hometown. It may well be I am overestimating the dangers of Beacon Cove. But without knowing more about this sheltered strand of beach filled with a plethora of rocks and boulders, and observing the way the ocean interacted with the shore at different times of the day, let alone in different seasons, I'd be leery of swimming there. Wouldn't you?

Agatha Christie wrote an astonishing number of books during her lifetime. 
When it comes to being a writer, and knowing what she was about, she totally nailed it. In terms of her storytelling ability, she got everything right. Her books and stories represent the epitome of the literary art form. She became, in every sense of the word, the author all others can only aspire to become. That's quite an accomplishment for a modest young woman to achieve in the male dominated 

Each day, Agatha Christie faced the daunting task of filling the empty page. In all likelihood, she started all those stories without knowing exactly what their final shape would be. Through braving each day's unknown dangers, she completed the rough drafts of those manuscripts. 

But she didn't stop there. Christie carried each and every story through the entire revision process. With each rewrite, she massaged and refined her stories into their ultimate, finished form. Then she battled her publishers to get her stories, told her way, into the hands of the public. 

All told, her publishing record suggests a life of constant struggle to create, to refine, and perfect. It tells of battles waged and won, and sometimes lost. Her vast, storytelling legacy paints a portrait of an exceptionally brave woman. 

Let others contest the dangerous waters of Beacon Cove. As for me, I'm content to remember the beauty I found there, and the pleasant afternoon I spent sketching what I saw. The memory of that experience, and how it colored my perception of her, will add greater depth and meaning the next time I open one of her books, and savor the results of the hard-won battles she fought over the final, finished pages. 

In fact, maybe I'll pick up one right now. How about you?

Dragon Dave

Danger at Beacon Cove Part 3

Standing up in the amphitheater, gazing down at Beacon Cove

There's a simplicity of style to Agatha Christie's books and short stories that belies the deep structure she built into her fiction. Sadly, that easy readability does not apply to her autobiography. Instead, Christie wanders along, relating reminiscences as she saw fit, whether they followed or backtracked in time. This is a real shame, as unlike her mysteries, it makes the narrative more difficult to follow. I started her autobiography a year ago, and enjoyed the portion I read. Then life through me a curveball, as it always does, knocked me out of the book for one reason or another, and I never came back.

Google "Agatha Christie Beacon Cove" and you'll find photos of this beautiful beach from a hundred years ago. Do a little digging, and you'll realize that Beacon Cove was a Women's Only beach during the author's childhood. She would have used one of those Victorian wheeled bathing machines to enter and exit the water! It's hard to imagine a bathing machine rolling up and down Beacon Cove without constantly breaking a wheel or axle on the boulders. Perhaps the city regularly trucked in sand to make the beach flatter back then. Either that, or Beacon Cove has suffered a great deal of erosion since Christie's childhood. But alas, that was over a century ago.

Do a little more online investigating, and you'll discover that, as a child, Christie didn't just wade into the water and squeal. She didn't just splash around with her friends. She liked to swim, really swim in the ocean. She saved her young nephew from drowning once, when he got into trouble at Beacon Cove. Later, during her world travels, she even took up surfing, and became one of the first British women to do so. When a particularly strong wave ripped off her swimsuit once, she crept out of the water when no one was looking. After she dressed, she went off to the shops, bought another swimsuit, and got back on her surfboard. 

I admire Christie for the way she wrote her fiction. Even if her autobiography has proven a  tougher sell, what I've learned online has made me want to delve back to it. She seems like a writer who didn't just sit back and observe life going on around her, but one who continually tested her limits. 

I wonder if she ever surfed at Beacon Cove?

Dragon Dave

Danger at Beacon Cove Part 2

According to the city of Torquay, Agatha Christie's hometown, Beacon Cove was one of the writer's favorite bathing spots. It's not hard to see why, given the beauty of the surrounding scenery. Nor on the afternoon we visited were we alone. A mother and her child joined us to share this quiet spot, sheltered by the wind, in tourist-popular Torquay. Like me, the woman sat on one of the large boulders, appreciating the scenery while her child played. Like my wife, the boy enjoyed exploring this rock hound's paradise.

Beacon Cove is no ordinary shingle beach. Round boulders and sharp rocks sit upon the shingle, or thrust up through the pebbles. Falling down, while walking over such an uneven surface, seems likely, especially after swimming, when your muscles are tired, and your sense of equilibrium has been weakened by all the motion of the waves.  Yet the city of Torquay has built an amphitheater here, so presumably Beacon Cove still proves popular with regulars and tourists alike.

But then, the Roman gladiatorial games were popular too. The masses crowded into amphitheaters to cheer on battles between strong and valiant souls. Inevitably, some of the competitors ended up being carried off the field during the course of their battles. So what could be more fitting than the city of Torquay building a concrete amphitheater where spectators can gather, and watch contestants brave the waves of Beacon Cove? Do modern crowds cheer when a swimmer emerges uninjured? Do the onlookers sigh or weep when a strong wave slams a swimmer into the rocks?

In her autobiography, and in the stories told about her by others, Agatha Christie seems like a level headed woman. The stories she constructed are charming and logical. Today they are regarded as paragons of the Cozy Mystery mini genre, in which violence is minimized, and a point of trauma is immediately followed by a scene in which the reader's sensibilities are soothed and comforted. 

Beacon Cove forms a strange contrast to the popular image of Christie as a woman of quiet, refined sensibilities. But perhaps she came here regularly to experience the thrill, and the danger, of swimming in this picturesque cove. Perhaps she learned how to comfort and sooth the reader by helping those injured by the waves and the rocks at Beacon Cove.

Does that image of Agatha Christie jar with your perception of her? Or does it gel with your knowledge of how adventurous she was, given the dangerous countries the writer visited in her travels, and the less-than-safe archeological digs Christie participated in with her second husband?

Dragon Dave