Agatha Christie, the famous mystery writer, created the fictional detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot is known for his meticulousness, use of psychology and deductive reasoning, his signature waxed mustache, and his egg-shaped head. He appears in 33 of Christie's novels, several plays, and over 50 short stories, with his first appearance in 1920 in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
Creator: Agatha Christie
Nationality: Belgian
Profession: Private detective
Notable Traits: Meticulous, relies on "little grey cells" (his brain power), proud of his appearance, especially his mustache.
First Appearance: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Last Appearance: Curtain (1975)
Hercule Poirot Is Dead; Famed Belgian Detective
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By Thomas Lask Aug. 6, 1975
Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective who became internationally famous, has died in England. His age was unknown.
Mr. Poirot achieved fame as a private investigator after he retired as a member of the Belgian police force in 1904. His career, as chronicled in the novels of Dame Agatha Christie, his creator, was one of the most illustrious in fiction.
At the end of his life, he was arthritic and had a bad heart. He was in a wheelchair often, and was carried from his bedroom to the public lounge at Styles Court, a nursing home in Essex, wearing a wig and false mustaches to mask the signs of age that offended his vanity. In his active days, he was always impeccably dressed.
Mr. Poirot, who was just 5 feet 4 inches tall, went to England from Belgium during World War I as a refugee. He settled in a little town not far from Styles, then an elaborate country estate, where he took on his first private case.
The news of his death, given by Dame Agatha, was not unexpected. Word that he was near death reached here last May.
His death was confirmed by Dodd, Mead, Dame Agatha's publishers, who will put out “Curtain,” the novel that chronicles his last days, on Oct. 15.
The Poirot of the final volume is only a shadow of the well‐turned out, agile investigator who, with a charming but immense ego and fractured English, solved uncounted mysteries in the 37 full‐length novels and collections of short stories in which he appeared.
阿加莎夫人宣布波洛去世的消息並不意外。他瀕臨死亡的消息早在去年五月就已傳來。
阿加莎夫人的出版商多德·米德確認了他的死訊，並於10月15日出版了記錄他最後時光的小說《帷幕》。
最後一卷中的波洛，與其說是那個衣著光鮮、行動敏捷的偵探，不如說是他自己的影子。他魅力十足卻又自負，英語也支離破碎，在他參與創作的37部長篇小說和短篇小說集裡，破解了無數謎團。
阿加莎夫人在《帷幕》中寫道，波洛在臨終前，再次進行了一次思考，將一位無辜的旁觀者從災難中拯救出來。 “他一生中沒有什麼比離開更適合他了”，莎士比亞的名言，波洛經常被誤用。
多德·米德沒想到這位著名偵探的英雄事蹟還能續寫。
去年沒有收到手稿，今年預計也不會收到。然而，坊間流傳著許多謠言，說阿加莎夫人把兩份手稿——一份是《波洛》的，另一份是《馬普爾》的——鎖在了保險庫裡，直到她去世才會出版。米德郡多德的喬納森多德說，現在出版的是《波洛》的。
Dame Agatha reports in “Curtain” that he managed, in one final gesture, to perform one more act of cerebration that saved an innocent bystander from disaster. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," to quote Shakespeare, whom Poirot frequently misquoted.
Dodd, Mead had not expected another installment in the heroic achievements of the famous detective.
No manuscript came in last year, and none was expected this year, either. However, there had been many rumors to the effect that Dame Agatha had locked up two manuscripts — one a Poirot and one a Marple—in a vault and that they were not to be published until her death. Jonathan Dodd, of Dodd, Mead, said that the Poirot was the one now being published.
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