Dear old Poirot

I finished reading "Evil Under the Sun" last night. (I pushed to finish it - I don't like taking books where I have less than 30 pages left to read with me on vacation).

I enjoyed this one. Yes, it had some pretty large and smelly red herrings in the plot, and sometimes Christie doesn't exactly play fair - by Golden Age Mystery standards - by having the police or Poirot be privy to information not revealed to the reader.

But, to be honest? I largely read the series-mysteries for the fun of reading about the detective character. I even sometimes forget enough plot details that I can re-read the book and not remember who did it.

Most of the detectives I read about, and enjoy, are from the so-called Golden Age - Inspector Alleyn (though I've run through most of the novels in that series), Albert Campion, Poirot. And on the American side, Nero Wolfe. (I also enjoy Inspector Brunetti - a modern series set in Venice - but those are very different). And Maigret, though those are more police-procedurals than really character-driven stories, I think...it's harder to know the sort of man Maigret is than it is to know the sort of man, say, Nero Wolfe is.

I admit I am not as big a fan of Christie's writing as I am of Ngaio Marsh's (Alleyn's author). I do not think - and for some mystery fans, this is heresy - she was as good a writer as some others. (And often her portrayals of people under the age of 20 or so seem rather stilted and unrealistic).

But I do love Hercule Poirot. (And of course, I also love the portrayal that David Suchet has given him over the years. Suchet makes SUCH a perfect Poirot.)

This novel had a couple of wonderful lines from Poirot. It is set at a seaside retreat in Britain, where Poirot has gone for vacation. He meets up with someone he knows a bit as she lives nearby and he has heard of her work - Miss Rosamund Darnley, a/k/a Rose Mond (her dressmaker's business).

Poirot seems quite fond of Miss Darnley, which makes me smile, because I don't remember quite this level of appreciation of a female from any of the other novels about him.

Miss Darnley is - I am not sure how old she is but one gets the impression she is well past the "expiration date" where a young woman in those days should have been married. And she is aware that the world looks differently upon unmarried women, no matter what other qualities they may have:

"Yes, I'm really the perfect type of successful woman! I enjoy the artistic satisfacion of the successful creative artist (I really do like designing clothes) and the financial satisfaction of the successful business woman. I'm very well off, I've got a good figure, a passable face, and a not too malicious tongue." She paused. Her smile widened. "Of course - I haven't got a husband! I've failed there, haven't I, M. Poirot?"

(I will pause to observe that I am glad I live in different times from Miss Darnley. Though perhaps not so different - having met the occasional person who claimed to "pity" me because I did not have a husband, and off whom I got the distinct sense that they DID feel I had "failed," in some way, in life.)

But Poirot, dear sweet Poirot, has a wonderful response:

"Mademoiselle, if you are not married, it is because none of my sex has been sufficiently eloquent. It is from choice, not necessity, that you remain single."

(My standard response to queries regarding my single state - which I consider awfully personal questions, but whatever, is to simply state the truth: "I have not met the right man." By that, I mean, I have not met the man who has successfully convinced me that life living with him in the same household is preferable to continuing my life lived by myself. Granted, I have not dated much in my life, but I do tend to believe there are worse things in life than remaining alone.)

Later on, after Miss Darnley again comments bitterly on people seeing her as an old maid, Poirot gallantly responds:

"To marry and have children,, that is the common lot of women. Only one woman in a hundred- more, in a thousand - can make for herself a name and a position as you have done."

.

(And yet, the silly - she still tries to argue him out of that! I'd hope that I'd be more prone to quietly smile and think, "Yes, perhaps the little Belgian is correct.")

Later, to another woman (who turns out not to be what she seems), he remarks, "To count - to really and truly count - a woman must have goodness or brains." (As opposed to "it").

(And yes, yes, I realize this is Christie putting words in an invented character's mouth. But I still love to imagine them coming from Poirot, to imagine that this life-long detective feels that way about women.)

Later on, he is described during an observation of the rooms (following the murder) as staying a moment in Miss Darnley's room, "linger[ing] for a moment in the sheer pleasure of the owner's personality."

Ah, could M. Poirot have a bit of a crush? I find that both wonderfully touching and amusing. (Later on, when speaking to a man she fancies but may suspect, Miss Darnley kind of throws Poirot under the bus, so to speak, by remarking that he is "awfully old" and implying, with the term "ga-ga," that he is not in his soundest mind. I liked her considerably less after that.)

(Sometimes I wonder if part of my fondness for characters like Poirot is that they are fundamentally loners - not the sad, creepy type of loner that finishes by having people say about him, "I would never have guessed...he just kept to himself and was very quiet" - but the loner who has chosen that state, either to pursue a higher calling, or be an artist, or observe human nature. In some ways I am a loner - I don't have a large number of extremely close friends, I am not bothered by going and doing things by myself, like shopping, that society tells me I "should" have a pack of female friends for. In fact, I'm actively annoyed the times when I happen to stop in a restaurant to grab a quick lunch and have the person seating people look at me and go "Only one?" with that note of pity and surprise, as if they cannot believe a woman would choose to eat at a restaurant alone.

I wouldn't necessarily say I've chosen a higher calling - though I wonder at my colleagues who have small children at home, how they manage - it must be very hard to have a family and teach college full time (doubly so if your spouse also teaches). But I do like Poirot, and Nero Wolfe (who, though he does have Archie around, and Fritz, and even Sourpuss Horstmann, is somewhat of a loner). Perhaps it's because I see a kindred spirit in them, someone who has arranged their lives pretty much to suit themselves, and do not want any pity from meddlers who think they would be better off married off.)