Poirot and Me (33 page)

we started shooting. Now there were far

more shots using hand-held cameras, more

elaborate exteriors, even grander props; we

were certainly in the world of cinema now –

even if the film was being made for

television.

That was also reflected in the casting.

Michelle and Damien had decided to fill each

new story with well-known actors that the

audience would recognise and identify with,

to underline their determination to make it a

television ‘event’. This meant that, on Five

Little Pigs, I found myself surrounded by

Gemma Jones, famous at the BBC for playing

The Duchess of Duke Street; Dame Diana

Rigg’s daughter, Rachael Stirling; Dame

Maggie Smith’s son, Toby Stephens; the

talented Sophie Winkleman; and the hard-

working and much-admired Patrick Malahide,

even if only for a comparatively brief

appearance as a barrister. There was no

Hugh Fraser as Hastings, no Philip Jackson

as Japp, nor Pauline Moran as Miss Lemon,

as their characters did not appear in Dame

Agatha’s original. The soap-opera element of

the Poirot family was definitely over.

Written in 1942 and published the

following year, shortly before her daughter

Rosalind gave birth to Dame Agatha’s first

grandchild, Mathew, Five Little Pigs was

retitled Murder in Retrospect in the United

States, and was the first of the Poirot stories

in which he is called upon to investigate a

cold case – the murder of a famous, and not

always likeable, English painter named

Amyas Crane, years earlier. Amyas was

killed with Poison, and sixteen years after his

wife Caroline was hanged for the murder, his

daughter Lucy asks Poirot to reconsider the

case and clear her mother’s name. The

British title refers to a well-known children’s

nursery rhyme which begins, ‘This little piggy

went to market, this little piggy stayed at

home . . .’ a passion for which Dame Agatha

attributes to Poirot rather than herself,

although he makes no reference to it

whatever during the mystery.

Brilliantly told in a series of flashbacks,

Five Little Pigs allows Poirot to visit the five

principal suspects in the murder and to

interview each of them in his own distinctive

style. As Kevin Elyot has him say in the

screenplay, ‘My success is founded in

psychology – the why of human behaviour,’

and he demonstrates this superbly in one of

Dame Agatha’s finest and most complex

mysteries. As Poirot confesses, ‘Human

nature has an infinite capacity to surprise.’

The strength of the cast forced me to raise

my game as an actor even further, for not

only was I working with some of the finest

members of my profession, but the budgets

had been raised once again. ITV were

reported to be spending more than £2

million on each of the new films. But beyond

that, my responsibility as the leading actor

had expanded even further, as I had also

been given a new role as the unpaid

associate producer of the new films, which

meant that I had more influence.

This was one of the defining moments in

the history of Poirot and me, because now I

was entrusted with the role of protector and

guardian of my character – and was no

longer simply an actor for hire playing a part.

In fact, I was the only person among the

cast and crew of the new series – apart from

Sean, my driver – who had been in the team

that had gathered at Twickenham in the

summer of 1988.

This really was a whole new world,

because suddenly I was involved in almost

every decision that was taken about the

films. Just to prove it, I was invited to a

make-up meeting about my moustache. The

new production team wanted to make

Poirot’s moustaches look more real – and if

you look at my moustache in Five Little Pigs,

you will see that it was quite different from

the ones from only four years before. It is

thinner, a little wider and it does not curl up

towards my nostrils as it had in the past,

instead it points straight out.

I was also given a whole new set of

padding, which I called my ‘armadillo suit’,

because it had layers that folded up beneath

one another, which allowed me – for the first

time – to wear shirt sleeves rather than a

jacket all the time, and, more important,

allowed me to walk with my head carried a

little more forward, just like the blackbird

that Dame Agatha had once briefly described

in her depiction of Poirot’s posture.

Now, with the added responsibility of

being the associate producer of the series, I

really felt as though Poirot and I were joined

at the hip. I was even allowed to change

Poirot’s words, if I believed that he would

have said something different. I was invited

to ‘tone meetings’ before we started filming

and to view see the early edited versions of

all the films and offer my opinions on the

way they looked to the audience. In fact, I

had a creative say in almost everything we

did. Even though I had no direct influence on

the choice of director and cast, the team

would listen to me if I had a particular idea.

I was no longer simply playing Poirot. That

rapidly became clear on the set itself when

we were filming, as more and more

members of the crew would seek out my

advice. It brought me a voice and influence

that I had never had before, and I relished it,

because it provoked me into committing

myself more and more in front of the

camera, particularly as I was now working

with such fine actors. I was thrilled, for

example, by the way that Toby Stephens

played the scene of his breakdown towards

the end of Five Little Pigs.

These changes were confirmed in the

second two-hour film we did as part of this

ninth series, Sad Cypress. Once again, we

had a terrific cast, led by the Liverpool-born

Paul McGann, part of an acting dynasty and

famous for his roles in the cult film Withnail

and I and the BBC’s controversial series The

Monocled Mutineer. There was also Diana

Quick, the first female president of the

Oxford Union Dramatic Society and famous

for her role as Lady Julia Flyte in the 1980s

television version of Brideshead Revisited,

and Rupert Penry-Jones, who went on to

make his reputation in the BBC spy series

Spooks almost immediately after he finished

filming with us.

Originally published in 1940, Sad Cypress

took its title from Shakespeare’s Twelfth

Night: ‘Come away, come away, death, and

in sad cypress let me be laid . . .’ Indeed,

much of its focus is on the indignities of old

age, but it also contains one of the few

courtroom dramas in a Poirot story – one

which rotates around a miscarriage of justice

which Poirot tries to avert. Directed by David

Moore and with a script by David Pirie, both

of whom were new to Poirot, it was darker

and more brooding than many of our other

Poirot films, and was distinguished by

another brilliant performance, this time by

Elisabeth Dermot Walsh as Elinor Carlisle,

the woman accused, and convicted, of

murder.

Dame Agatha had reservations about the

story, saying, in 1965, that it ‘could have

been good, but it was quite ruined by having

Poirot in it. I always thought something was

wrong with it, but didn’t discover what until I

read it again sometime after.’ Fortunately,

many people disagreed with her, and I felt

our version of the story – though a touch

gloomy at times – worked extremely well.

We filmed many of the exteriors at a Sue

Ryder hospice in Surrey, which was filled

with elderly ladies and gentlemen, most of

whom turned out to be fans of Poirot, which

meant that I was invited to visit them on the

wards dressed in my costume. It was the

first time I remember realising how much

pleasure people got from meeting him.

I was very aware, as I went round, that

most of the ladies and gentlemen living

there related to me only through Poirot, so I

made sure to remain in character, answering

their questions as Poirot would, and keeping

his walk and all his mannerisms. I was also

aware that most of the residents would not

be going home again, and I could not help

but be reminded, as I went from bed to bed,

of my own dear father’s final days in a home,

when he did not always remember exactly

who I was when I went to visit him.

Meeting the hospice residents in full

costume was a great deal easier for me then

being recognised as Poirot when we were

not filming – although that had its

extraordinary moments. There was one

particular moment that happened around

this time which I will never forgot.

I was coming into London on the Tube

from our house in Pinner one morning for a

meeting, quietly reading and minding my

own business as the Tube wound its way

through Metroland and into town, when all of

a sudden – quite out of the blue – someone

in the carriage yelled at the top of their

voice, ‘It’s Poirot!’

I looked up to discover that the shout had

come from a nun, dressed in full habit, who

was now running down the carriage towards

me. She proceeded to sit down directly

opposite me, squeezing herself between two

other unsuspecting passengers, and then

reached out, grabbed my hand and shook it

vigorously, saying how pleased she was to

meet me. I smiled as best I could, and

nodded politely.

Things did not end there, however. The

nun explained to me that she had just ‘come

out of silence’ and could not wait to express

her joy at seeing me. She then went on to

tell the entire carriage, pretty much at the

top of her voice, that she and the other nuns

at her convent liked to watch Poirot after

dark on Sunday evenings, even though the

rules of the convent did not really allow

them to do so.

‘It is one of our forbidden secrets,’ she

chortled, with a broad smile on her face. ‘It

is quite wonderful.’

By now I was as red in the face as a

beetroot, and wanted nothing more than for

the carriage floor to open up and deposit me

on the track beneath – anything to escape –

not least because I began to feel rather as

though I had become a star in a blue movie

which showed every Sunday evening at the

convent.

I managed to wish the nun a cheery

goodbye as I stepped off the train at Baker

Street and disappeared into the crowd, with

my cap pulled firmly down over my eyes.

But, looking back, it serves to remind me

just how lucky I am to have so many

different kinds of fans around the world, all

of whom seemed thrilled by Poirot. I learnt

recently that the series was almost the only

English-language

programme

that

was

allowed on East German television before

the fall of the Berlin Wall – all the others

were censored. What is it that makes him so

loved? It is a question that came to absorb

me more and more.

Back on the set, things were rather

calmer. The third film in the new series, The

Hollow, was written at the end of the Second

World War and published in 1946, becoming

one of Dame Agatha’s great successes,

selling more than 40,000 copies in hardback

in its first year, even in those times of

austerity. She herself called it ‘rather more of

a novel than a detective story’, and there is

no doubt that she peopled her book with

some of her most engaging characters – not

least Sir Henry and Lady Angkatell, whose

country house is called The Hollow.

In fact, Dame Agatha partly took the title

from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem ‘Maud’,