Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Barbara Franklin, the wife of Judith’s employer Dr Franklin and the childhood friend of Sir
William Boyd Carrington, dies the following evening. She has been poisoned with physostigmine
sulphate, an extract from the Calabar bean that her husband has been researching. After Poirot’s
testimony at the inquest — that Mrs Franklin had been upset and that she had emerged from
Dr Franklin’s laboratory with a small bottle — a verdict of suicide is brought in, but Hastings
suspects that the death was murder and Poirot confirms this.
Norton, still evidently upset about what he has seen through the binoculars, asks Hastings for
his advice, which is to confide in Poirot. Poirot arranges a meeting between them and says that
Norton must not speak to anyone further of what he has seen. That night, Hastings is awakened
by a noise and sees Norton — with his dressing-gown, untidy grey hair and characteristic limp —
go into his bedroom. The next morning, however, Norton is found dead in his locked room with
a bullet-hole perfectly in the centre of his forehead, the key in his dressing-gown pocket and a
pistol (remembered by a housemaid as belonging to him) nearby. Apparently, X has struck again.
Poirot takes Hastings over the evidence, pointing out that his belief that he saw Norton that
night relies on loose evidence: the dressing-gown, the hair, the limp. Nevertheless, it seems that
there is no one in the house who could have impersonated Norton, who was a short man. Hastings
despairs that the mystery will ever be solved when Poirot himself dies that night, apparently
of natural causes. He nevertheless leaves Hastings three conscious clues: a copy of Othello, a
copy of John Ferguson (a 1915 play by St. John Greer Ervine), and a note telling Hastings to
speak to his permanent valet, George. In the weeks that follow the death of Poirot, Hastings is
staggered to discover that Judith has all along been in love with Dr Franklin, and is now marrying
him and going with him to do research in Africa. Was Judith the murderer? When Hastings
speaks to George, he discovers that Poirot wore a wig, and that Poirot’s reasons for employing
Curtiss were vague. Perhaps the murderer was Curtiss all along?
The solution, and one of the greatest of Christie’s twist endings, is contained in a written
confession that is sent to Hastings from Poirot’s lawyers, four months after Poirot’s death from
a heart attack. Poirot reveals that he wore a false moustache as well as a wig and explains that
X was Norton, a man who had perfected the technique of which Iago in Othello (like a character
in Ervine’s play) is master: applying just such psychological pressure as is needed to provoke
someone to commit murder, without his victim truly realising what is happening. Again and
again Norton had demonstrated this ability, first by apparently clumsy remarks that goaded
Colonel Luttrell to take a shot at his wife. The shot is not fatal and Mrs Luttrell recovers. Then,
Norton carefully manipulated Hastings to resolve upon the murder of Major Allerton. It was
Norton’s contrivances that created the impression to Hastings that Judith loved Allerton, when
in fact she has been in love with Franklin all along. Hastings’s potential murder was averted by
Poirot, who put sleeping pills in Hastings’ hot chocolate that night. Poirot knew Hastings was not
a murderer, but had he not intervened Hastings likely would have hanged.
Deprived of his prey twice, Norton turned to Mrs Franklin, fertile territory, as she was really
a conniving and mercenary woman underneath her timid facade. Mrs Franklin was successfully
manipulated by Norton to attempt the murder of her husband, after which she could be reunited
with the wealthy Boyd Carrington. By an ironic twist of fate, Hastings himself had inadvertently
intervened, by turning a revolving bookcase table while seeking out a book to solve a crossword
clue (Othello again, coincidentally), thus accidentally swapping the cups of coffee and the one
with poison in it was actually drunk by Mrs Franklin herself. Poirot knew all this but could
not prove it and sensed that Norton, who had been deliberately vague about whom he had seen
through the binoculars when attempting to imply that he had seen Allerton and Judith, was now
intending to reveal that he had seen Franklin and Judith, thus almost certainly implicating them
in the apparent murder of Mrs Franklin. The immediate solution was for Poirot to heavily insist
that Mrs Franklin had actually done what she had meretriciously whined about doing — taking
her own life — which no one ever believed she would do. Poirot’s strange insistence confuses
Hastings, but the strength of Poirot’s word carries the day.
However, the only permanent solution was for Poirot himself to murder Norton. At their meeting,
he revealed to Norton what he suspected and said that he intended to ’execute’ him. He then
gave him hot chocolate. Norton, who did not deny anything, remained arrogantly self-assured in
the face of both the accusation and the threat, insisted on swapping cups, but both contained
the same sleeping pills which Poirot had previously used to drug Hastings; guessing that Norton
would request the swap, Poirot had drugged both cups, knowing that his time taking the pills
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