Poirot and Me (7 page)

of flowers for my buttonhole. All that was left

was the moustache we’d taken such trouble

with. It was put in place by the first of many

make-up ladies I have had over the years.

The moustache was always put on in the

make-up truck or dressing room after I had

put on my costume. There would always be

two – when one wore out, we would have

another one made, as a spare.

All that was necessary now was for the

wardrobe mistress to brush Poirot’s hat very

carefully. I gently reminded her that number

forty-six in my list of characteristics said that

he would ‘always brush his hat “tenderly”

before leaving his flat’. Finally, I reminded

myself of number forty-eight: ‘Can’t abide

being or feeling untidy. A speck of dirt on his

clothes is “as painful as a bullet wound”.’

There wasn’t a speck to be seen anywhere.

Walking onto the sound stage for a set of

still photographs and a full video screen test,

I allowed myself to think – just for a moment

– that Agatha Christie herself might just feel

a touch of pride at the look of the man who

was walking out to face the cameras that

morning. Feeling quietly confident, I walked

up and down, bowed, doffed my hat and

smiled a little warily into the camera. I

wasn’t sure that I had quite mastered

Poirot’s distinctive, thin smile quite yet.

Pride cometh before a fall: there was

something else that I most certainly hadn’t

mastered – Poirot’s walk.

When Brian Eastman and I sat down to

look at the screen test that afternoon, we

realised that I simply didn’t move as we both

knew the great man would have done. My

stride seemed too big and too certain. My

Poirot should walk like a dancer – poised and

graceful, always on the balls of his feet.

Instead he was walking as though he were

playing Iago – manly, dramatic and anything

but fastidious.

Horrified, I left Twickenham in a panic and

drove home on the verge of despair. How

was I going to find his walk? I had no idea. I

was absolutely at a loss. But then I

remembered that Agatha Christie herself had

once described it. The only question was

where? I started going through her stories

one by one, desperate to locate her

description, and – quite by chance – I

stumbled upon it.

These were his creator’s words: ‘Poirot

crossed the lawn, with his rapid mincing

steps, his feet painfully enclosed within his

patent leather shoes.’

His feet hurt, that was part of the secret,

and the other part was that he ‘minced’. At

last I understood, but the question was –

how could I create that particular walk?

Then I remembered a famous Laurence

Olivier story explaining how he’d managed to

walk like a ‘fop’ in a Restoration comedy. ‘I

put a penny between the cheeks of my bum,

old boy,’ he’d said, ‘and try to keep it there.

If I can manage to do that, then I can

produce the mincing walk I need to play the

role.’

Without a moment’s hesitation, I went out

to walk round and round my garden with a

penny between the cheeks of my bottom –

except I used a small, modern, post-decimal

penny. Larry had used a big old-fashioned

one.

I practised walking for hours, stopping,

turning and bowing – all with the penny

clenched between my buttocks. It fell out a

good many times at the start, but then,

gradually, it began to stay in for longer and

longer, so much so that I forgot it was there.

My stride shortened, I came up on the balls

of my feet, and all the time I kept imagining

that my feet hurt, trapped in those painful

patent leather shoes.

Finally, I rang Brian Eastman and

suggested a second screen test. Back we

went to Twickenham, where I got back into

full costume and make-up – with the

moustache, of course – and into those tight,

shiny shoes. Then I went in front of the

cameras.

It worked. At last we knew that we now

had our Poirot, walk and all.

The only thing left for me to do was to go

and find a book of Edwardian manners. After

all, if one of Poirot’s major cases when he

was still in the Belgian police was the

Abercrombie forgery case in 1904 – as

Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard reveals in

The Mysterious Affair at Styles – then he

would most certainly have been aware of the

delicacies of Edwardian Europe. He would

have gradually confirmed his own manners

at the end of the nineteenth century and the

first years of the twentieth, as a man in his

middle age. That’s when they would have

been formed, and they would have remained

with him ever since.

I wanted to know the precise details of

how an Edwardian gentleman would greet a

lady; how to tip one’s hat; how to walk with

a cane; how to hold one’s gloves; whether to

take them off, and when; how to bow and to

whom, and when; how to take a lady’s hand

and kiss it; how to sense a silence and not

break it.

There aren’t many men today who could

cope with a Homburg hat, white gloves and

a silver-topped cane without dropping one or

all of them. I knew in my very soul that

Poirot would never, ever, have allowed

himself to make such a mistake.

And as the days passed in that summer of

1988, another thought struck me – I was

beginning to see ever more clearly the

parallels between Poirot and me.

As my list of characteristics pointed out, at

number sixty-five, he ‘will usually wear a

morning suit when working at home – like a

Harley Street specialist’. That struck a chord,

for my own father had done the same in his

rooms at Number 2, Harley Street, while

treating

his

private

patients

as

a

gynaecologist and obstetrician.

I too liked things to be symmetrical around

me. If I put two things on the mantelpiece,

they have to be exactly evenly spaced,

though I’m not quite as fanatical as Poirot. I

also think people find it easy to talk to me,

as they do to him. ‘Women find him very

sympathetic,’ my note number seventy-five

said. My brother John insists that I was

always attracting the pretty girls when we

were young men, while he wasn’t, though I

don’t honestly remember that. But, like

Poirot, I would admit that I have a ‘twinkle’

in my eye when it comes to ladies. I think

my wife would agree with that, because I

twinkled at her. As for my baldness, there

was a similarity there too. I lost a great deal

of my hair when I was just twenty-three,

after a love affair collapsed. I was

heartbroken, and so was my hair. Perhaps

the same thing happened to Poirot – who,

according to number sixty-seven of my

notes: ‘Once fell in love with an English girl

who used to cook him fluffy omelettes.’ He

would have liked to have been married, and

– as my note number eighty-nine reminded

me – ‘Genuinely believes that the happiness

of one man and one woman is the greatest

thing in all the world.’

It was almost as if Poirot and I had started

to become one – though perhaps I had been

a little luckier in love.

Quite by chance, Sheila and I were looking

to buy a new house in the months before I

started filming. The children were growing

ever

more

active,

and

we

wanted

somewhere in the suburbs, rather than in the

crowds of central London, for them to grow

up in.

One house we looked at, Elmdene in

Pinner, was owned by the late, great comic

actor Ronnie Barker – and when we arrived,

we both agreed that it looked exactly like a

house in an Agatha Christie story. There

were leaded lights in the windows, an Art

Deco front door and reception rooms, even a

garden large enough for all the suspects to

assemble for Poirot’s final revelation of the

murder.

Even more extraordinary, when I went into

the dining room to talk to Ronnie about the

house and the possibility of buying it, above

the mantelpiece, there was an oil painting of

him dressed in character.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked Ronnie.

‘Oh, that’s me as Hercule Poirot,’ he said

with a little smile. ‘I played him in Black

Coffee in rep. I wasn’t very good.’

Perhaps inevitably, Sheila and I ended up

buying the house – we knew that Poirot

would have approved of it.

Poirot was suddenly everywhere I turned,

peeking from the next room, reminding me –

and challenging me – to bring him truthfully

to life on the screen.

Then, just a couple of weeks before

shooting was about to start, I was invited to

lunch by Dame Agatha’s daughter Rosalind

Hicks and her lawyer husband Anthony, who

I knew looked after the Christie affairs

around the world.

We went to a small Italian restaurant just

off Kensington High Street with glass-

panelled walls and ferns, which made it all

feel very light and airy. I sat down thinking

that it was going to be a happy,

congratulatory lunch, though I was also

distinctly nervous, as this was the first time

I’d met Dame Agatha’s only child, who was

then almost seventy.

What I didn’t realise, as we sat down, was

that I was about to be as grilled as the sole I

ordered for lunch. The whole meal was taken

up with Rosalind and Anthony asking me to

clarify exactly what my intentions were

towards Poirot. How was I going to play

him? What did I have in mind for his voice

and walk? How was I going to deal with his

little idiosyncrasies?

The room may have been airy, but the

atmosphere was rather less so. Then,

towards the end of the meal, Anthony Hicks

leant across the table towards me and

looked me straight in the eye.

‘I want you to remember’, he said, a touch

fiercely, ‘that we, the audience, can and will

smile with Poirot.’

Then he paused.

‘But we must never, ever, laugh at him.’

There was another pause.

‘And I am most certainly not joking.’

I gulped, before Rosalind said, equally

forcefully, ‘And that is why we want you to

play him.’

With those words ringing in my ears, I knew

that I had to be 100 per cent in character

from the very first day of filming, and that I

had to project Poirot’s behaviour precisely as

Dame Agatha had described it in her books

from the first moment the cameras turned,

because the character I was committing to

celluloid would be fixed forever.

I also knew that this was one of the most

important days of my life.

Chapter 3

‘I’M SORRY, BUT I AM

NOT GOING TO WEAR

THAT SUIT’

It was just before 6.30 a.m. on a bright,

sunny morning in late June 1988 when

Sheila and I walked out of our new home on

my first day of shooting for the first series of

Agatha Christie’s Poirot for ITV – the day

that I knew could well be the most important

in my life.

We’d finally bought Ronnie Barker’s house

in Pinner, Middlesex, not far from the church,

and we’d moved in on Midsummer’s Day, but

we weren’t quite settled – there were still

boxes everywhere. Most frightening of all,

neither of us knew whether we would

actually be able to afford to stay there.

On the doorstep, Sheila and I turned to

each other and said, almost in unison, ‘We’ll

be very happy if we manage to stay here for

a year.’ It was such a special house for us,

way beyond our dreams.

As I walked towards the car that the

producers had arranged to collect me, I said,

with a smile on my face, ‘If we don’t get

another series, we sell.’

Sheila laughed as I climbed into the

passenger seat and shut the door. Driving

away, I looked back through the rear window