Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case by Agatha Christie

Published 1975, written in the 1940s

The sound of the gong startled me as I went along the passage. I had completely forgotten the passage of time. The accident had upset everything. Only the cook had gone on as usual and produced dinner at the usual time.

Most of us had not changed and Colonel Luttrell did not appear. But Mrs Franklin, looking quite attractive in a pale pink evening dress, was downstairs for once and seemed in good health and spirits. Franklin, I thought was moody and absorbed.

After dinner, to my annoyance, Allerton and Judith disappeared into the garden together. I sat around a while, listening to Franklin and Norton discussing tropical diseased. Norton was a sympathetic listener, even if he knew little of the subject under discussion.

observations: This was the last Poirot story, and most people know what’s going to happen to him. Our old friend Hastings is narrating, and the people mentioned in this short extract include his daughter, and others who may be murderers, potential murderers, victims…. who knows? Mrs Franklin is a classic Christie character, enjoying her ill-health and exercising power over men.

Famously, Christie wrote this book during the Second World War, and locked it away in a bank vault – in the end it was published shortly before she died. Opinions vary on its merits: I re-read it to coincide with the TV version - going out tonight as an end to all the Poirot adaptations starring David Suchet – and realized it was one of very few of her books that I had read once and never read again. 

Perhaps, knowing it could be published at any time over the next half-century, Christie deliberately didn’t root it in any time, and to me it lacks the casual details that make her books so engrossing. It is set at Styles – the country house where the first Poirot mystery was set – and she’s good at creating a tense atmosphere with a certainty that something bad is going to happen. It actually does read like a final mystery, with a sad air of ending up – you have to keep reminding yourself that she wrote books with a lively, healthy and busybody Poirot for years after this one.

The lack of a rooted time also means that the ages don’t work out: Hastings seems ancient at some moments, but is said to be only 10 years older than a 35-year-old at another - the older age is more likely.

Other books are referenced: Poirot speaks of Death on the Nile, and Hastings mentions a detective story by someone else which Clothes in Books is able to confidently identify as John Rhode's 1928 The Murders in Praed St. [This could be a spoiler – Hastings mentions the motive for a series of murders – but nobody in modern times could read the book and not see the links between the crimes a million miles off.] Christie twice says that someone ‘negatived’ something – an odd usage that we drew attention to on the Guardian books blog recently.

It’s a serious book, not much in the way of jokes, but there is one fine moment: Hastings has told us much about a character who is a fine man, the best sort, a wonderful person. Late on Poirot says in passing ‘he is one of the most pompous and boring individuals that I have ever come across! Just the sort of man you would admire!’

The end of a great character, and always worth reading for that reason.

The picture is by Ambrose McEvoy and comes from the Athenaeum website.