Illustration of Poirot from first edition
Poirot Investigates is a 1924 short story collection by Agatha Christie.
As the title indicates, it is a collection of stories featuring Christie's most popular character, Hercule Poirot. All the stories had previously been published in periodicals. The original British version contained the following 11 mysteries:
- "The Adventure of the Western Star": Poirot is hired by an American film actress, Mary Marvell. She has received a threat that someone will steal her giant diamond, the "Western Star".
- "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor": Poirot investigates the suspicious death of a businessman by internal hemorrhage, just a few weeks after he bought a fat life insurance policy.
- "The Adventure of the Cheap Flat": An acquaintance of Captain Hastings mentions finding an apartment in London for a shockingly cheap price. Poirot becomes curious, investigates, and uncovers an espionage plot.
- "The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge": Poirot investigates the mysterious shooting death of a rich young man's uncle.
- "The Million Dollar Bond Robbery": After a young bank employee is accused of stealing a million dollars in Liberty Bonds, his fiancee asks Poirot to find the real thief.
- "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb": An archaeologist's wife hires Poirot after her husband and his partner both die within two weeks of opening the tomb of an ancient pharaoh.
- "The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan": A valuable pearl necklace is stolen from a hotel.
- "The Kidnapped Prime Minister: Not David Lloyd George, but David MacAdam, a fictional PM who is kidnapped on the way to Versailles to negotiate the Versailles treaty.
- "The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim": Poirot makes a bet with Inspector Japp that he can solve the disappearance of a banker in one week without leaving his chair.
- "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman": Poirot and Hastings accompany a mutual friend, Dr. Hawker, to a crime scene. One Count Foscatini, an Italian, has been murdered in his home.
- "The Case of the Missing Will": A young woman hires Poirot. It seems her rich uncle died and, in a from-beyond-the-grave prank, left her all his money—but only if she can find the will.
- The American version of this book included three more stories, which would only be published in book form in Britain many years later:
- "The Chocolate Box": Hastings comments about how Poirot has never failed. Poirot answers back that yes he has, and recounts a story back from when he was a Belgian policeman before the war. An anti-Catholic politician named Paul Déroulard died at his home. Was he poisoned? (Chronologically, this is the earliest story in the Poirot canon.)
- "The Veiled Lady": A heavily veiled woman identifies herself as Lady Millicent Castle Vaughan, and says she is engaged to the Duke of Southshire. However, a blackmailer has possession of an extremely embarrassing love letter that Lady Millicent wrote when she was a teenager. She wants Poirot to get the letter back.
- "The Lost Mine": Poirot describes to Hastings the circumstances that led to his ownership of stock in a Burmese lead mine. He had been hired to investigate the death of a man who held the only records of its location and was negotiating to sell them to an English investment company.
The stories include examples of the following tropes:
- Big Eater: Graves is one, as seen in "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman." After killing Count Foscatini, he orders dinner for three and eats as much of the food as he can to make it appear that a guest committed the murder after the meal. However, he can't finish off the side dish and leaves the dessert untouched, clues that Poirot uses to uncover the truth.
- Bitter Almonds: In "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb", "a smell of bitter almonds filled the air" when the bad guy kills himself by swallowing cyanide, after realizing the game is up.
- Blackmail: It's an iron rule in the Christie canon that blackmailers die. Count Foscatini was blackmailing another man, which allowed Graves the valet to kill Foscatini, steal the blackmail money, and cast suspicion on the man being blackmailed.
- Chubby Mama, Skinny Papa: The Bakers, the housekeepers in "The Case of the Missing Will". He is "gnarled and pink-cheeked, like a shrivelled pippin," while she is "a woman of vast proportions."
- Continuity Nod: When Mary Marvell shows up and Hastings fails to recognize her, Poirot tells him to remember "the case of the dancer, Valerie Saintclair." That is Poirot story "The King of Clubs".
- Curse of the Pharaoh: Sir John Willard and Mr. Bleibner, the two explorers who opened the tomb of the pharaoh Men-her-Ra, die of heart failure and blood poisoning respectively, within two weeks of each other and within a month after the opening of the tomb. The newspapers talk of the "Curse of Men-her-Ra", but Lady Willard hires Poirot to investigate.
- The Dandy / Neat Freak: Poirot, in spades. He's always worried about keeping his clothes immaculate and his surroundings tidy.
- Deus ex Machina: Mr. and Mrs. Havering, the murderers from "The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge", get away with it because there's no proof. But then Hastings says in the last line of the story that they were killed in a plane crash a few years later.
- Funny Foreigner: Poirot, as always — taking advantage of the traditional English suspicion of foreigners by deliberately playing up his naive eccentricity, thus putting witnesses and suspects off their guard. In "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor" he greets a newly widowed woman with "I cannot tell you how I regret to derange you in this way,", confusing "derange" for "disturb" (after the manner of the French "déranger"). Christie, and Poirot, would reuse the joke several times — almost unchanged in her next book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, later openly acknowledging it as a deliberate ploy on his part in Dead Man's Folly.
- Have a Gay Old Time: Captain Hastings manages to do this twice in one sentence, in the second sentence of the first story."That's queer," I ejaculated suddenly beneath my breath.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: What happens immediately after Hastings reads a newspaper article about the theft of a million dollars in Liberty Bonds? Esmée Farquhar, the fiancee of the bank executive accused of incompetence related to the theft, visits Poirot and asks him to investigate.
- Insurance Fraud: Suspected in the case of Mr. Maltravers in "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor", he having died of a hemorrhage just a few weeks after getting an insurance policy with a payoff of £50,000. Turns out that his wife killed him and staged it to look like an accident.
- Invisible Writing: The weird old guy in "The Case of the Missing Will" wrote out his will in invisible ink, on an envelope that he left sitting out in his study.
- It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Christie starts "The Chocolate Box" with "It was a wild night. Outside, the wind howled malevolently, and the rain beat against the windows in great gusts." Hastings and Poirot are sitting in front of a fire, which gets Poirot in a mood to reminisce.
- It Works Better with Bullets: In "The Adventure of the Cheap Flat" Poirot clumsily lets an Italian assassin get hold of Hastings's gun... except for the fact that Poirot took the bullets out, which the assassin discovers when he tries to use the gun.
- Land Poor: Lord Yardley from "The Adventure of the Western Star" admits that he is in debt up to his eyeballs, which is why he's letting some American movie people use his castle for a film shoot.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Dr Harker gets excited about the mysterious murder of the count, saying "Like the beginning of a novel, eh? Real exciting stuff. Wouldn’t believe it if you read about it."
- Meaningful Name: A woman who collects jewels and jewelry is named Mrs. Opalsen.
- My Greatest Failure: In "The Chocolate Box" Poirot, the brilliant if egotist detective, retells the story of his only failed case, which had involved a poisoned chocolate box. He then tells Hastings to whisper "chocolate box" to him whenever he gets too pompous, adding, "I, who have undoubtedly the finest brain in Europe at present, can afford to be magnanimous." Hastings then immediately says "chocolate box." Poirot doesn't get the joke. At all.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: "David MacAdam" is an obvious stand-in for the real prime minister during and after World War I, David Lloyd George.
- Offing the Offspring: In "The Chocolate Box", Madame Deroulard killed her own son Paul for his power gain and for murdering his wife Marianne by poisoning the chocolates that she sent to him. Hercule Poirot finds out the truth, then admires her for her courage and allows her to die of a terminal illness after solving the case but keeping it a secret.
- On One Condition: "The Case of the Missing Will" involves a rich dude who left everything to his only relative, his niece...but only if she can find the will, which he hid, within a year of his death.
- Phoney Call: In "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman", Graves the murderer called Dr. Harker on the phone, impersonating his master Count Foscatini, and pretended to be dying. This was to give himself an alibi, after he made sure that he was seen leaving.
- Reckless Gun Usage: For Mrs. Maltravers to kill her husband in "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor", she must first coax him into sticking the barrel of his rook rifle
into his mouth, to demonstrate that he could kill himself that way. - Ripped from the Headlines: "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" was originally published six months after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which Capt. Hastings mentions at the beginning of the story.
- Sick Episode: "The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge". Poirot ends up with a nasty bout of the flu just before a visitor arrives hoping to get his help in solving a murder. Hastings goes in his place, sending back reports of his findings and carrying out Poirot's instructions.
- Stealing from the Till: The solution behind Mr. Davenheim's disappearance. He was embezzling from his bank, so he created a new identity as a petty criminal named Billy Kellett, got himself arrested, and intended to vanish with the stolen money after being released.
- Stopped Clock: In "The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman", the murderer changed the time on the clock and then smashed it, in order to confuse the time of death and establish an alibi.
- Too Good to Be True: In "The Adventure of the Cheap Flat," an acquaintance of Hastings boasts of how she and her husband have managed to rent a flat at a rate nearly four times lower than the average for that neighborhood. Hastings writes it off as a stroke of incredible good fortune, but the story prompts Poirot to investigate.
- Trophy Wife: Mrs. Maltravers in "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor" is an attractive woman in her late twenties married to "an elderly mate she has only married for his money".
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Mary Marvell is hiding the Western Star in her Compartment (it's on a chain but she isn't wearing it as a necklace).
- The Watson: Captain Arthur Hastings, who appears in most of the early Poirot novels and stories as his Watson, the guy that Poirot explains everything to. Unlike the original Watson, who seemed largely content to be Sherlock Holmes's admirer and chronicler, Hastings gets quite irritated when Poirot outguesses him and makes him look dumb.Hastings: Good Lord, Poirot! Do you know, I’d give a considerable sum of money to see you make a thorough ass of yourself—just for once. You’re so confoundedly conceited! [from "The Million-Dollar Bond Robbery"]
- Word Association Test: Poirot uses this an an interrogation tool with Captain Black in "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor".
