Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
would give him a higher tolerance for a dose that would put Norton out.
With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked (for which he needed
a temporary valet who wouldn’t realise this and would accept his word without question, the
reason Poirot did not travel with his long-term permanent valet George, who knows Poirot’s true
physical condition, and with whom Hastings later speaks), moved the body back to Norton’s
room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his wig, putting on
Norton’s dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the
house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot’s room, Poirot shot him —
with characteristic symmetry — in the centre of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate
key; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot’s
own room, but the detective had said he had changed rooms before Norton’s arrival, and it was
to this previous room that he had the key.
Poirot’s last actions were to write the confession and await his own death by moving the amyl
nitrite phials out of his own reach and dying of a heart attack, thus avoiding the traditional
arrogance of the murderer who has come to believe that he had the right to kill those he deemed
it necessary to eliminate. Poirot had always insisted during his long career that a person who had
taken another person’s life, except in the cause of self-defence, could no longer be relied upon to
respect the sanctity of life, and hence Poirot’s own relentless insistence on bringing guilty parties
to justice. Poirot’s last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance
of the inveterate matchmaking that characterised his entire career.
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