In Johnnie Waverly, Poirot and Hastings encounter a disappointing buffet breakfast at the home of their host, and subsequently decide to nip off in the car in pursuit of sustenance at an inn. Murders feature Christie’s scenes of Poirot’s singing in church and to tease Hastings, respectively. Neither adaptions of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe nor The A.B.C. 🙂 In the television series, we distinctly hear Poirot’s singing voice ( hesitant remains a pretty good adjective to use) in a few places: The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly, The Theft of the Royal Ruby, and The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I think it is safe to say that Poirot is not much of a singer. Comme ça,’ Poirot sang in an abominable falsetto voice: The tune you hummed dates, I think from the days of the war. ‘The proud have laid a snare for me,’ he sang, ‘and spread a net with cords: yea, and set traps in my way…’ Hercule Poirot essayed in a hesitant baritone. He is said to sing in “a hesitant baritone” as well as affecting “an abominable falsetto voice”! Off the top of my head, I can think of two instances in the books where he sings (diligent readers may possibly think of others). The “remake” includes the test tube of liquid, which in Lempicka’s original has (presumably) some medical aspect, but which seems to have been cleverly re-imagined as relating to “Astwell Chemicals.” Like the Alistair Blunt portrait, the face is reconfigured to look like Sir Reuben (Denis Lill).Ī few random notes about Poirot’s singing. There is a similarly-styled portrait, a la Lempicka, in the episode The Underdog- a painting which hides the safe of Sir Reuben Astwell, the murdered man.Īgain, it is based almost completely off of a legit Lempicka painting, Dr. You can see below how the face of the man has been changed to look like Alistair Blunt (Peter Blythe). In fact, that painting above isn’t only in the style of Lempicka– it is basically a conglomeration of different Lempicka paintings: a portrait of Mrs Boucard and one Mr Tadeusz de Lempicki. This is historically fitting, since Lempicka painted a number of “celebrity” portraits for the wealthy and aristocratic in the ’20s and ’30s. In the Poirot episode One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, the board room of Alistair Blunt shows a portrait of himself and his wife Rebecca, done exactly in the style of Lempicka. I had, some months ago, painted a tiny (reversed) copy of one of her works– a girl with gloves– for the cover of one of my miniature books. Her distinctive style shows influence of Cubism as well as Ingres-style portraiture.

Lempicka was a celebrated Polish Art Deco artist. Sometimes I think the art department for Agatha Christie’s Poirot must have been having so much fun… Did you know that multiple paintings in the series were basically tweaked renditions of Tamara de Lempicka’s works?

One two buckle my shoe poirot