Poirot and Me by David Suchet, Geoffrey Wansell Page A

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