Poirot and Me (21 page)

decision came through while I was filming

The Secret Agent, and I was thrilled.

The success of the two-hour versions of

Dame Agatha’s Peril at End House and The

Mysterious Affair at Styles had apparently

helped to convince executive producer Nick

Elliott that there was an appetite for longer

films, not least because the American

audience seemed to like them. So he

decided, in the first months of 1991, that

they would film three two-hour specials later

that year, and that, once again, he would

ask Brian Eastman to produce them.

So, in the summer of 1991, three years

after that lunch with Rosalind Hicks and her

husband, I went back to Twickenham Studios

to film three two-hour Poirot films. There

were to be one or two changes, however. My

old friend Hugh Fraser was only to appear in

the first of the three stories as Hastings,

though Inspector Japp was in them all. The

indefatigable Miss Lemon, so neatly played

by Pauline Moran in the first three series,

was also missing from two of the new films.

The absence of two of my three allies

made me a little sad, but the cast that Brian

Eastman assembled for each of the three

new films was so good that it almost made

up for it, and the attention to period detail

that he and London Weekend had been

honing throughout the first three series was

now on full display. The new films were

going to look as good as British television

could possibly make them – in our eyes, the

equal of anything that the American

networks might do.

The first of the three was Dame Agatha’s

c l a s s i c The

ABC

Murders,

called

a

masterpiece by many of her admirers, which

features murders that are announced before

they have even taken place, in letters to

Poirot signed ‘ABC’. The first murder is in

Andover in Hampshire, the second in Bexhill

in Kent, the third in the fictional town of

Cherton, possibly in Devon, and the fourth is

destined to happen in Doncaster in South

Yorkshire, but Poirot is determined that it

will never be allowed to happen. Beside the

body of each of the victims lies a copy of the

English ABC Railway Guide.

The original story began its life as a

serialisation in the Daily Express in England,

but the novel itself was published in both

Britain and the United States in the first

weeks of 1936. It was so strikingly good that

it became an instant worldwide hit, and had

even been made into a feature film in 1966,

with the American Tony Randall as Poirot

and the British actor Robert Morley as

Hastings. There was even a rumour that the

American comedian Zero Mostel was to have

played the little Belgian in that production,

but Dame Agatha, who took a great interest

in any depiction of her character on the

screen, objected strongly when the film’s

original screenplay called for Poirot not only

to have a love interest, but also a love

scene. In the end, it had neither.

Our new film had no such problems –

there was not a trace of a love scene. The

script was once again by the wonderful Clive

Exton, and the director was Andrew Grieve,

now both veterans of the series who exactly

understood the character I was determined

to portray.

In fact, ABC is a delight, perhaps even my

favourite Poirot film. It begins with Hastings

returning from a trip to the Orinoco Delta in

Venezuela, bearing a stuffed crocodile as a

present for Poirot, which stands – decidedly

uncomfortably – on the sideboard at

Whitehaven Mansions when the first of the

‘ABC’ letters arrives. Poirot is very pleased to

see his old friend, and insists he stay with

him in the flat while Hastings finds himself

somewhere to live, but the little man also

confesses to him that he has not been very

busy: ‘The little grey cells, they have the

rust.’

The cast was terrific, with Donald Sumpter

particularly good as the travelling stockings

salesman Alexander Bonaparte Cust, who

becomes the prime suspect for the murders.

For me, the scene that Donald and I played

together in a jail cell is one of the highlights

of all the Poirot films that I have made.

When you have actors of his quality

alongside you in a piece, it improves the

work of everyone, and the better everyone

one is, the happier I am, because it also

makes me raise my own performance to

match theirs. There is no competition

between us as actors, just the pleasure of

seeing one actor’s performance bringing out

the best in all of us. It certainly did on ABC.

The second film was Death in the Clouds,

which Dame Agatha wrote in 1935, the year

before ABC. Called Death in the Air in the

United States, it is a prime example of one

of her favourite plot devices: the victim and

the potential murderers all isolated in a

single location – be it in an English country

house, on a train journey, on an isolated

archaeological excavation in the Middle East,

or – as in this case – on a flight from Le

Bourget Airport in Paris to Croydon Airport to

the south of London.

It was to be directed by the actor Stephen

Whittaker, who had played alongside me in

Blott on the Landscape for the BBC, but had

now turned director. Stephen had never

directed any of our films before, and indeed

nothing on quite this scale, and I think he

found it quite a challenge. He was also

working with a script from another

newcomer to the series, the experienced

British screenwriter William Humble, who

had started his career writing Emmerdale.

Nevertheless,

Brian

Eastman

had

surrounded them with another excellent

cast, led by Sarah Woodward, daughter of

the actor Edward Woodward, who was –

effectively – my Hastings for the story.

Nothing was lost by the transformation; in

fact, it was a marvellous change for me to

have a lady with a sharp mind as my

companion rather than the ever-loyal

Hastings.

At this stage, I had no say in who was to

write or direct any of the films, but I had

great faith in Brian Eastman’s judgement as

a producer. By now, he had a well-earned

reputation for making high-quality television

drama, which meant that not only did actors,

writers and directors want to work with him,

they also wanted to work on the Poirot

series. It was his vision, and his ability to set

the tone for what we were doing, that

provided one of the cornerstones of the

success of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. I do not

believe anyone else could have ensured the

production quality that Brian did, especially

when it came to the cast, locations and

props – not least the vintage aeroplanes and

cars – or matched his eye for an interesting

background to add a little glamour to the

story.

Set largely in France, which demanded a

French crew alongside our English one,

Death in the Clouds focuses on the death of

Madame Giselle, a mysterious French

moneylender, who is discovered dead during

the plane’s journey from Paris to London. Not

surprisingly, it also features Poirot’s fear of

flying, which means that he is asleep,

possibly from taking a sleeping draught,

when the murder takes place. There is even

a little Dame Agatha joke, as the plane’s

passengers include a ‘mystery writer’ called

Daniel Clancy, who becomes one of the

suspects, as well as being Inspector Japp’s

favourite author.

Filmed against the backdrop of the French

Open tennis championship for men in Paris in

1935, which was won by the British amateur

Fred Perry, the story makes a great deal of

the appetite for gambling among the plane’s

occupants, particularly Lady Cicely Horbury,

who is seen repeatedly losing in the casino,

but it is the mystery of who killed Madame

Giselle on the plane that brings the story its

distinctive charm. How was she murdered,

and by whom? It is one of Dame Agatha’s

most intricate plots. I like working on the

longer films like this one because it gives me

an opportunity to develop the character, but

even more than that, I thought it was

wonderful that a series like ours was now

capable of going to Paris, even if only for a

few days. I kept pinching myself to make

sure it was true. This was also the first time

that I ever visited the French sculptor

Auguste Rodin’s house in the Rue de

Varenne, which helped me to understand the

art of sculpture more completely. Ever since,

I have always gone to Rodin’s house

whenever I am in Paris.

The last film in the fourth series was One,

Two, Buckle My Shoe , which was, in some

ways, the strongest of the three. It was the

first of Dame Agatha’s stories to use a

nursery rhyme as its inspiration – an idea

she was to return to time after time in the

following thirty-five years. Written just after

the outbreak of the Second World War in

1939, it reveals a changing world, where

nothing is now quite as cosy and stable as it

had been before the war intervened. There

is revolution in the air, with references in the

book itself both to the ‘Reds’ of the Soviet

Union and ‘our Blackshirted friends’ of

Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

Both appear in Clive Exton’s script for the

film, which was directed by Ross Devenish,

who had made such an excellent job of The

Mysterious Affair at Styles two years before.

Once again the story displays one of

Poirot’s pet hates, this time of going to the

dentist, as well as his suspicion of dentistry

as a profession. It opens with a dentist’s

death in his Harley Street surgery, only a

matter of minutes after Poirot has left the

chair. At first, the death looks like suicide,

but it quickly transpires that international

politics could be involved as Poirot and Chief

Inspector Japp begin to investigate. A

second death follows shortly afterwards, and

not long after that, the character of Frank

Carter, who seems to support the Fascist

movement, appears.

Carter was played by a new young actor

called Christopher Eccleston, then just

twenty-seven, who had made his reputation

in the profession a few months earlier in the

Peter Medak film Let Him Have It, about the

1953 hanging for murder of the illiterate

teenager

Derek

Bentley,

played

by

Eccleston. Formidably talented, Chris only

had a small part in One, Two , but he was so

good I could never forget him. I knew at

once that here was a future star. So it

proved, for he went on to confirm his

reputation on television in Cracker and

Doctor Who, in films with Shallow Grave and

28 Days Later, and at the Donmar

Warehouse and the National Theatre. It

gives me great pleasure to think that Poirot

was there at the beginning.

A shoe buckle certainly plays its part in

Dame Agatha’s story, which also serves to

remind the audience just how excellent a

detective Poirot can be, as well as being

someone who is exceptionally considerate

towards everyone he meets, be they the

English aristocracy or their servants. That

allowed Clive Exton to provide Japp with a

little joke at Poirot’s expense when he says,

‘You always did move in exalted circles,

Poirot.’ Poirot brushes the remark off, even

though he knows that it is true. Clive also

allowed Poirot to confirm his principles as a

detective, when he explains, ‘I am

methodical, orderly and logical,’ before

adding forcefully, ‘and I do not like to distort