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Did Achille Poirot really exist?

06 Apr 09 9:38AM

SPOILER WARNING! THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE BIG FOUR AND CURTAIN. DO NOT READ THIS ESSAY IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THESE BOOKS

We know very little about Hercule Poirot’s family life, and the few details that Poirot reveals may not be reliable, since he often makes up details about his wife to advance his investigations. For example, in one story in Poirot Investigates, Poirot lies and claims to have a sick wife in order to gain entrance into an apartment. There are a few references to his career as a Belgian police officer, but he rarely speaks about his family. In Three Act Tragedy (Murder in Three Acts) he claims to have been poor as a child. Given the setting where he made this statement, there is no particular reason to doubt this revelation.

Throughout the series, every now and then Poirot makes a reference to his family members, although the veracity of these statements is subject to doubt. He refers to his sick, elderly mother in Dumb Witness, but he may simply be using this story in order to chat up some medical workers. He mentions a nephew with mental problems in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but once again, this relative may be simply a ploy to assist in the gathering of vital evidence. In Cards on the Table, he refers to some young nieces who are fond of silk stockings, but once again this statement may be nothing more than a part of his plan to trap a kleptomaniac killer.

Simultaneously, there is nothing to indicate that any of these referenced family members are purely fictional. Poirot may very well have relatives matching these descriptions, or perhaps he did at one point before they died. It should be noted that just because Poirot never mentions visiting or corresponding with family members, it does not mean that such interactions never happened. The recorded cases only cover a small fraction of Poirot’s life, with gaps as long as several years between mysteries. It’s possible that Poirot remained in close contact with his family members, even though we never read of these meetings. We must not assume that just because relatives are not mentioned, that they do not exist. After all, during Hastings’s appearances during the 1930’s (Peril at End House, Lord Edgware Dies, The A.B.C. Murders, Dumb Witness), he and his wife must have had at least one (and possibly more) of their four children, yet Hastings never mentions them!

There is one relative of Poirot’s who receives far more coverage in Christie’s writings than all of his other family members, real or imagined, combined. That relative is Achille Poirot, Hercule’s twin brother, and his existence is just as doubtful as those of his other relatives. Achille is first mentioned in The Big Four, when Hercule declares to Hastings that the case may be too difficult to solve on his own, and that he may need to call upon the assistance of his twin brother. Hercule explains that he and Achille look very much alike, although Achille is “not nearly so handsome.” Achille’s eyes are brown while Hercule’s are green, and Achille has a facial scar and no moustache. Hercule claims that Achille is even cleverer than himself, although Achille lacks the ambition to put his prodigious talents to good use. Late in The Big Four, Hastings believes that Achille has taken Hercule’s place in order to help defeat the supervillains, but in the last pages of the book, Hercule declares to Hastings that he lied, that there never was an Achille Poirot and that Hercule took on the persona of his fictional brother in order to defeat his antagonists.

And so, the one relative of Poirot’s that we thought we had finally met never existed. Achille was just a ruse employed by Poirot, probably inspired by the character of Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older brother, who might have been an even greater detective were it not for the fact that Mycroft was too lazy to put his intellectual prowess to work, save for the occasional excursion into international diplomacy. Or was he? There are several Agatha Christie fans who insist that Achille Poirot was indeed a real person (at least as far as the boundaries of mystery fiction will allow), and there is indeed some evidence in the Christie canon to justify this belief.

Achille Poirot is not mentioned again until the prologue of The Labours of Hercules. Dr. Burton, a friend of Poirot’s, asks about his brother Achille. Hercule thinks about the “brief career” of his brother, wonders “had that all really happened?” and after a reflective pause, Hercule’s response is “only for a short space of time.” Now, there are several potential meanings to this response. Poirot could have remembered creating a purely fictional brother for the purposes of defeating the Big Four, and gave Dr. Burton the response he did simply because it was easier than recounting the entire story. Alternatively, perhaps Poirot really did have a brother Achille who died young. That would mean that Achille was real, although not to the extent that Hastings originally believed. There are a couple of other interpretations that will be discussed later.

There are some other points that indicate that Achille was not imaginary, and may perhaps indeed have existed at the time of the Big Four’s defeat. Some fans argue that Poirot could never have compelled himself to shave off his moustache, even if it was to defeat the machinations of The Big Four. Indeed, shaving his moustache does seem like an unnecessary step if Achille were purely fictional– after all, Poirot could have simply claimed that his brother also had a moustache (although perhaps a differently styled one), and thereby saved himself the indignity of the razor.

Another physical suggestion for Achille’s existence at the time of the Big Four’s vanquishing is Achille’s facial scar. Some of the scar is hidden by a fake moustache, but Hastings’ description leads to the implication that a substantial part of the scar is still visible. Hercule declares that he gave himself a real scar, even though doing so gave him “much pain,” because Number Four would have detected any make-up. The sacrifice may have been counter-productive, since if Number Four’s eyes were sufficiently astute to detect cosmetics, Number Four could certainly have determined the difference between a scar that had only existed for months and a scar that was years, perhaps decades, old. Besides, if Number Four was so perceptive of the use of make-up, wouldn’t he have picked up on Hercule’s use of belladonna in the eyes in order to make them appear brown instead of green? Like shaving, the scar seems like an unnecessary step.

Could Hercule have permanently disfigured himself, even to save the world? Even when playing for such massive stakes, it seems unlikely. Remember Poirot’s obsession with his personal appearance and symmetry. As Hastings comments in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a speck of dust on his clothing “would have hurt him more than a bullet wound.” The scar, according to Hastings, “completely altered the expression of the face.” Would Poirot have ruined the symmetry of his face, and perhaps forever ruined his moustache? After all, hair never grows back the same way over scarred skin. Poirot is sensitive to anything that might damage his moustache. In Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, after commenting upon Superintendent Sugden’s fine moustache, he strokes his own and mourns the fact that even the most expensive preparation to eliminate grey hair and restore its natural color inevitably damages the hair. Surely he would have anguished over the damage to his moustache caused by scar tissue?

Another point regarding the scar is the fact that even though Poirot lives almost another half-century after the Big Four case ends, no one ever mentions the scar again! Even with a regrown moustache, according to Hastings’s description, a substantial amount of the scar would still be clearly visible. Over the next fifty years of cases, Poirot is described by first-person narrators, the omnipotent third person, and dozens of characters, and they all describe his height, his build, his hair, his moustache, his clothing, his mannerisms, his affectations, and everything else about him, but they never mention his scar! Why else would that be, unless the scar did not exist? But if so, what happened to the scar? The obvious answer to that is that the scar remained on the face of its true owner: Achille Poirot.

This supposition involves a further corollary, that there was no imposture on the part of Hercule, that Achille Poirot really did exist, and that he was alive at the time of the Big Four’s final defeat, and that Hercule’s words to Hastings at the end of The Big Four were the real lie. Hercule’s words to Dr. Burton could have meant that Achille lived to adulthood, and that Achille was indeed involved in the downfall of the Big Four.

Poirot scholars are split on the interpretations of these implications. Some have concluded that Achille was killed in the destruction of the Felsen labyrinth, and that Hercule covered up the truth when talking to Hastings for reasons of his own. An alternative explanation is that Achille is still alive, but that for whatever motive, the brothers have decided to keep Achille’s existence under wraps. A possible explanation for that lies in the various parallels between the Poirot brothers and the Holmes brothers. Mycroft Holmes is known for his work in global relations. Perhaps Achille is involved in something similarly epic, where it would be safer for the world to think him dead.

Now, despite all of the inconsistencies and speculation in this essay, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Achille Poirot was indeed a fiction. Nevertheless, there are enough contradictions and unanswered questions in Christie’s work to suggest a different interpretation. If we assume that Achille Poirot lived and survived the events of The Big Four, then when did he die? We know that Hercule met his end in Curtain... or do we? Poirot allegedly shaves his moustache in Curtain again for the purposes of capturing a killer, and the same objections to his performing the same action in The Big Four still apply. Another concern raised by many readers involves the extreme steps that Poirot takes to finally bring a killer to justice in Curtain. Lots of Christie fans consider these steps to be extremely out of character for Hercule. Perhaps they were, but were they out of character for Achille? Could Achille have been the one who took those drastic steps? Could Achille have been the Poirot who died at the end of Curtain? Could Hercule Poirot still be alive, able to investigate major crimes in secret while the world thinks him dead, like Sherlock Holmes? We don’t know. All in all, probably not. But isn’t it an interesting prospect to ponder?

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7 comments

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emilytrefusis 26 Sep 10 at 10:43a.m.

I thought it was quite clear that Achilles doesn't exist?

MissQuin 10 Mar 10 at 3:58p.m.

We know more about Miss marple's childhood. Poirot's is enigmatic. He was brought up as Roman Catholice. He mentioned nieces and nephews, but they were always used to extract info from people. (cards on the table, Ackroyd)

HeiseiHolmes 29 Jan 10 at 5:15p.m.

I certainly hope he did! It makes me imagine Poirot's mother as a crazy lady with a fondness for Greek myths... He must have had a weird childhood, don't you think?