Not long ago we witnessed the final episode of Poirot, aptly named Curtains, where Poirot is reunited with Captain Hastings, once again at Styles, the setting of their very first murder investigation.
Styles, a victim of declining fortune, has become converted into ‘Styles Court’, now a Hotel, where the ill assorted guests carefully nurtured their secret grudges and unresolved yearnings.
Flashbacks of a scene from a court’s death sentence and the harrowing subsequent execution of a young female, mingled grimly with Poirot’s troubling chest pains and his lonely confinement to a wheelchair.
Banter and Wit bravely lingered on in Curtains, yet seemed half hearted and desultory: a pale gesture in the face of impending mortality.
We worried with Captain Hastings, if Poirot’s little ‘cells’ would ever last long enough for his last case to be solved.
Mon ami, how we forget the compelling power of a posthumous letter-n’est-ce pas?
How clever can Poirot be when his use of the third person becomes a metaphor for his descent into his ultimate objectivity- the final death of his bodily self?
Poirot’s final letter reminded us of the residual starry brilliance of those little brain cells, poignantly surviving death in a gesture of accusatory and shocking resurrection!
Poirot’s letter is a true revenant of revelation!
Poirot the Detective had become Poirot the murderer!
But I digress…to return to Styles…the darkly lit interiors and the gloomy corridors and stair wells, were a painful reflection of Poirot’s palpable ill health.
As we watched the pale Poirot muffled up in his wheelchair, still acutely observing the ill assorted group of suspects at Styles, we became aware of the tableau effect of the spectral light; the curious shades of grey about Poirot’s face, as he wrestled with malignant possibilities; the darkness inevitably closing in about Poirot, as he slipped inevitably into his final sleep.
It reminded me at times of Vermeer’s interiors, where intimacy seems claustrophobic and yet poignant; an effect sometimes attributed to Vermeer’s possible use of the camera obscura.
Perhaps you could also detect a hint of Shakespeare’s problem play, Measure for Measure, where the supposedly ‘absent’ Duke is in fact very much present and is described pointedly by Lucio as ‘the Prince of dark corners‘, unnervingly observing all the subterfuge and dangerous goings on: a curious witness to the chaotic desires of his subjects.
Eh voila!
Poirot, he vanishes into the shadows where he has spent so much of his waking life!
C’est la vie et c’est la mort!
Au revoir!
