Tear Jerker / Poirot

• Curtain. Start to finish.
  • The Lonely Piano Piece that is played at the beginning of the episode and during Poirot's last goodbye to Hastings, and his final moments? Fryderyk Chopin's Opus 28, No. 15 (Raindrop). Give it a listen here, and bring your tissues along.
• The ending of The Hollow. After Gerda Christow goes to her private room and sees a photo of her husband John and their children one last time, she commits suicide by taking potassium cyanide. So heartbreaking.
• Also, the sad music that plays in Appointment with Death, in the scene when Dame Celia Westholme approaches the helpless Lady Boynton to perform the Coup de Grâce on her, is "Dido's Lament (When I Am Laid in Earth)" from the 1689 opera Dido and Aeneas by English composer Henry Purcell. These lyrics say it all as if in a reminder from Lady Boynton:
  When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs create
  No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
  Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
  Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
• The end of Three Act Tragedy. The actor playing Poirot expresses really well the feeling of betrayal he's feeling towards the murderer, his old friend Sir Charles Cartwright.
• The end of "Problem At Sea". Ellie Henderson is genuinely quite sad over Colonel Clapperton's guilt.
  Ellie Henderson: He didn't do it for me, you know...
• The death of Mrs. Alice Pengelley in "The Cornish Mystery". She'd come to Poirot for help, only to die the very next morning while he was on the way. He takes the fact that it was such a near miss hard.
• "The Double Clue" deals with jewel theft rather than murder, so is ostensibly less sad. However, Japp's job is on the line throughout the episode, leaving him desperate to figure things out. Tellingly, he comes to Poirot for help instead of the typical setup of him being annoyed at Poirot's interference.
  • Meanwhile, with Poirot off with Countess Rosakoff for much of the episode, Hastings and Miss Lemon are concerned that their own involvements with Poirot are coming to an end. Miss Lemon in particular is hit fairly hard.
• In Cat Among the Pigeons when Miss Chadwick is dying Miss Bulstrode remarks that she was too old to replace her and she thought she would of understood it now realising she didn't and in a rage attempted to kill her rival for the job.
• This adaptation of Elephants Can Remember features Canon Foreigner Mary Jarrow, Dorothea's daughter who takes murderous revenge on behalf of her mother. She is shown to be a broken and embittered Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and a very tragic figure when Poirot unmasks her.
• In Death On The Nile, while Poirot is full of disdain for Simon, he is absolutely heartbroken over Jacqueline's involvement in the murders. The look of anguish on his face after he lets Jacqueline take matters into her own hands to spare herself and Simon from the gallows says it all.
• The beginning of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Seeing Hastings in a convalescent home seemingly suffering from shell-shock is a bit of a gut-punch, especially given his usual cheeriness. This was not in the novel, so it can come as a shock even to people who've read it.
  • From the same episode, while it's played for laughs, there's something sad about Poirot's dislike of England this time around given he's been forced to immigrate from his home country by The Great War. He clearly wouldn't have gone there unless he absolutely had to.