Torquay, Fawlty Towers & Agatha Christie

The first time I heard of Torquay, I was watching Fawlty Towers. Basil & Sybil Fawlty were trying something new in their boutique hotel. "Gourmet Night" was to set Torquay alight, giving cultured residents and visitors another opportunity to mix, mingle, and sample epicurean delights. Instead, like all Basil's plans, the first and only event collapsed in catastrophic fashion.

Still, as I watched "Gourmet Night," and the other eleven episodes of Fawlty Towers, I wondered what Torquay was like. While never making serious plans, I thought: "If I ever travel to England, that's a city I could visit."

Well, why not?

As I've since learned, no part of the famous sitcom was actually filmed in Torquay. According to recent reports, the hotel it was based on, Gleneagleas, has closed and may not reopen. But as my wife and I make this year's plans to visit England, Torquay is on our itinerary. This time, it has nothing to do with Fawlty Towers, and everything to do with Agatha Christie.

I can't say I fell in love with Agatha Christie's stories, although I did read her novel Ten Little Indians in my teens. But the TV series based on her works, particularly that of Hercule Poirot, have become favorite viewing in our household. The TV series led me to her stories, and I've recently enjoyed the first two Poirot novels. Both kept me awake hours after I laid down in bed at night, and made me want to read more of her page-turning prose. 

Agatha Christie was born in Torquay. Although she left it numerous times, the seaside English town always drew her back. Eventually, she bought a home there, Greenway, which she visited each summer. While she existed in other places, Torquay was the place she felt she really came alive. We look forward to our visit to Torquay this year, and seeing the surroundings that formed and inspired her. 

I've dallied with the idea of making a second blog, one devoted solely to Agatha Christie, and linking it with Dragon Cache. There I could post my plans, my thoughts, my reflections on Agatha Christie as we prepare for this year's journey. Of course, I could also share that portion of our England journey on that site. It's an idea; I haven't made up my mind yet. If I do so, I'll post the link on the upper right hand corner of this blog, right below Pocket Dalek, so you can easily find it.

Still, I can't help but marvel. Decades after Fawlty Towers made me wonder about Torquay, I'm finally traveling there, and doing so because of Agatha Christie's Poirot. The TV series has lasted for far longer than two seasons and a mere twelve episodes, and I've come to love even more than Fawlty Towers. Doesn't that seem just a little amazing? 

Dragon Dave

My Uncle, Hercule Poirot

As I rode the London Underground this morning, I wondered if we had been wrong to select Florin Court as a worthy destination.  As I walked London’s busy streets, my feet, legs, and entire body aching from the previous day’s explorations, I could not help wondering if my journey was pointless.  Why travel out of one’s way merely to gaze upon the outside of a building once filmed by a TV crew, after all?  Yet there was no sense in changing course now.  For whether it made sense or not, whether I could justify or even explain to myself why I was doing this, I felt as if I was visiting an old friend, perhaps even a member of my family.

I was going to visit the home of my kindly old uncle, Hercule Poirot.

We linger on Poirot's doorstep.

In the early seasons of “Agatha Christie’s Poirot,” every time we see Poirot in the office of his fifth-floor flat, we are first shown the front of an apartment building bearing the lettering “Whitehaven Mansion.”  Thus we feel grounded: Poirot lives here; this is where his friends and clients visit him.  Through his meticulous craft, the actor David Suchet breathed life into the fictional literary detective.  Certainly Hercule Poirot accorded everyone he met with understanding, kindness, and respect.  Were I in trouble or distress, I knew he would not disregard me.  Like a kindly old uncle, he seemed a person who would always feel for me, whatever my situation; he would always respect me, encourage me, and believe the best of me.   Even if such a person dwells in a fictional realm, should we not honor such loyalty and affection?

Like literature, TV and film weave their magic.  At the beginning of the episode “The Third-Floor Flat,” we see children playing in the park across the street from Whitehaven Mansion.  Cars toot their horns as they thread their way through pedestrian and vehicular traffic.  One of the green tea huts that cater to London cabbies is parked outside, and customers line up to purchase food and drink.  Such a scene suggests that Poirot, while smart and financially well off, is still a man of the people.  He does not hide himself away from others; he remains in the center of London.

The park before Whitehaven Mansion

To reach Florin Court, we had to walk down a narrow street that seemed little more than an alley.  Vehicles were parked diagonally before it, leaving only a narrow space through which delivery vehicles and residents’ cars may pass.  The park, while nicely manicured, was fenced around, and only residents possessed a key to the gates.  The trees had grown tremendously in the last two decades since the TV show began filming: it was impossible to photograph the building from straight on.  Unless we clambered over the wrought-iron fencing, we could not stroll through the small park.  The building was there, albeit with different lettering over the front door.  Everything else was different.

As we headed off to our next destination, I wondered whether the exertion and time involved in visiting Poirot’s home had been worth it.  I could not say, definitively, that it was.  Yet, I felt as though I had paid my respects to someone whom I loved and admired.  For the building possessed Hercule Poirot’s elegance and style.  I could imagine him living there, looking out of those curved-glass windows.  At least now I would know the reality behind the TV crew’s historical recreations.  When I watch such episodes as “The Third-Floor Flat” in the future, I know I will feel a little something special.  For I have visited the home of someone I care about.  I have dwelt with Poirot as he chatted with his friends, consulted with clients, and solved his cases in his Art Deco-style flat.  While fictional, Whitehaven Mansion has become a place that I regard as home.

Now, if only I could stroll through the park!

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Previous entries on Hercule Poirot in “The Third-Floor Flat”

Hercule Poirot’s Compassion

Hercule Poirot’s Family

Fun Internet Link:

The London Cabbie’s Green Tea Hut

Hercule Poirot’s Family

In the episode “The Third-Floor Flat” of the TV show “Agatha Christie’s Poirot,” Hercule Poirot suffers from a lingering cold.  His secretary, Miss Lemon, forces him to breathe in the vapors from a steaming bowl, with a towel covering his head, for a period of time that seems unendurable to Poirot.  He hungers for a case, something upon which to focus his “little grey cells.”  But, as with the preceding days, no appeals for help arrive via the mail or the front door.

The Mailbox outside Poirot's flat in Whitehaven Mansion

When he braves the walk from his apartment building to the mailbox, he wears a hat and coat, with the collar turned up to shelter his breathing.  His friend, Captain Hastings, arrives in a car he has just returned to perfect working order.  He declares that Poirot is in a bad way, and invites him out to the theater tonight.  When Poirot declares that he is at death’s door, and that a murder-mystery play is hardly sufficient to revive his little grey cells, Hastings suggests a wager: If Poirot can guess the villain before the final act, the Captain will pay him ten pounds.  

During the intermission, Poirot concludes that the only person capable of poisoning the sherry, and therefore murdering the woman, was the butler.  As he and Hastings talk, Poirot notices his beautiful young neighbor Patricia from the flat below him.  Then they return to the play, in which a police inspector reveals that the murderer was not, in fact, the butler.

Poirot returns to Whitehaven Mansion

In Poirot’s flat in Whitehaven Mansion, he argues that the playwright did not give them all the facts.  He also muses that his little grey cells have failed him.  Perhaps his failure to correctly interpret the playwright’s clues means that his best days as a detective are behind him, and he should retire.  Just then, he hears a strange creaking.  He opens the coal hatch in his kitchen, looks down the chute, and sees the two men who accompanied Patricia and her friend to the theatre hauling themselves up using the rope-and-pulley system.  It appears that Patricia has lost the key to her fourth-floor front door.  Unfortunately, the men miscalculate, and enter the third-floor instead, where they discover the body of Ernestine Grant.

As he walks up the steps of Whitehaven Mansions, Chief Inspector Japp warns his men that this is where the famous Hercule Poirot lives.  Despite his fondness for the Belgian, he knows that the detective will question his findings.  Indeed, when Japp determines that the killer was named John Fraser, and Poirot asks if he can visit the third-floor flat once more, Japp tells him that there is nothing to investigate this time.  But at the pleading in the Belgian’s eyes, Japp gives in, knowing that in handing Poirot the key, he risks the man overturning his conclusions.

When Ms. Lemon tells me of Poirot's
cold, I agree to visit another time.

By the end of the story, Poirot determines that the murderer is Patricia’s fiancé Donovan, who attempts to flee the building.  Hastings proves instrumental in catching the fiend, but in the process, his beautiful car sustains great damage.  (Poirot graciously pays Hastings his ten pounds for losing their bet, which the Captain can put toward repairs).  Far from being upset at being proved wrong, Japp seems proud of Poirot for solving the crime.  And the next day, when Ms. Lemon brings Poirot a steaming bowl and a towel, Poirot tells her that such ministrations are no longer necessary.  For, with his friends’ help, he has solved a mystery, and prevented a murderer from escaping justice.  This success has buoyed not only his belief in his own abilities, but banished all physical ailments.

The TV dramatization focuses just as much upon Poirot’s personal difficulties, and upon the role his friends play in helping him through them, as it does upon the plot of the murdered woman.  In so doing, Poirot becomes a real person.  In repeatedly showing how Poirot helps his friends, and how they in turn help him, we sees the little Belgian as so much more than just another detective who unravels the most complex puzzles.  He is someone who cares for others, and hence someone whom we can care about.  

Whether they belong to the police, function as private consultants, or work in some other capacity, Literature and TV are replete with characters who spend their lives solving puzzles.  Most will be forgotten; a few endure.  But for me, the diminutive Belgian detective stands head and shoulders above all others.  As this story demonstrates, he cares about those who are hurt by the actions of the heartless.  Perhaps that is why Ms. Lemon and Captain Hastings care for him and treat him like a member of their family.  Perhaps that is why production of “Agatha Christie’s Poirot,” begun in 1989, continues to the present day.  

Perhaps that is why Agatha Christie is the top-selling author in the English language of all time.  

“Agatha Christie’s Poirot” is available on DVD from the BBC.

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Hercule Poirot’s Compassion

In the Agatha Christie story, “The Third-Floor Flat,” Patricia returns home to find that her key is no longer in her purse.  While her friends Jimmy and Donovan joke about her misfortune, her friend Mildred asks, “How are we going to get in?”  Eventually, Donovan suggests a solution.  The men journey down to the basement, open two cabinet-sized doors, and climb onto the small lift by which the building’s residents have coal delivered to their flats.  The two haul themselves up using the rope-and-pulley system, but when they crawl through the hatch in the apartment, the light switch doesn’t seem to work.  They stumble around in the darkness until they find another.  The light brings two discoveries: 1) They inadvertently miscounted, and are in a third-floor flat, not Patricia’s fourth-floor residence; and 2) The former tenant, an Ernestine Grant, has been murdered.

In the doorway of the dead woman’s flat, the men tell Patricia and Mildred of their discovery.  They recognize that they must call the police.  At this point, a man dressed in a “resplendent dressing-gown and embroidered slippers” agrees with their decision.  This “little man with a very fierce mustache and an egg-shaped head” tells them he is a tenant on the fifth floor.  Although he has taken his flat in the name of Mr. O’Connor, it is clear from his speech and appearance that he is no Irishman.  He hands Patricia his card and places himself at their service until the police arrive.

“M. Hercule Poirot.  Oh!”  She caught her breath.  “The M. Hercule Poirot?  The great detective?  And will you really help?”  

Maybe the coal lift isn't the best way
 to visit your friends in Whitehaven Mansions.

After visiting the dead woman’s flat, Poirot, Jimmy, and Donovan return to Patricia’s, where she cooks them omelets for a late supper.  The police arrive, and an investigation is carried out.  The assessment: the villain is a John Fraser.  Poirot asks to be allowed to study the third-floor flat once more.  After he does so, Poirot declares that no John Fraser exists.  Instead, the murderer is Donovan, who married Ernestine Grant eight years ago, but is now courting Patricia.  

Poirot relates the latter to Jimmy while Donovan awaits them in Patricia’s flat.  We never learn why Donovan’s relationship with his wife soured; we only know that Ernestine Grant moved into the third-floor flat to prevent her husband from marrying Patricia.  Poirot then asks Jimmy of his feelings for Patricia.  Jimmy admits that he cares for her, but never thought he had a chance with Donovan around.  Poirot encourages him to stand by Patricia in the days ahead.  She will be named as “The Other Woman” in the newspapers, and she has just lost the man whom she cared most about.  

This original short story is very different from the dramatized version depicted on the TV show “Agatha Christie’s Poirot.”  Poirot cannot rely on the assistance of his friend Captain Arthur Hastings in solving the murder.  Ms. Lemon does not manage the in-home office for him (in fact Ms. Lemon works as the secretary to Agatha Christie’s other private detective, Parker Pyne, in several of his early stories).  The inspector who calls to officially conduct an investigation is not TV’s Chief Inspector Japp (another man with a “very fierce mustache”), but instead the featureless Inspector Rice.  Yet one aspect of the story remains unchanged: Poirot urges Jimmy to support Patricia in her time of trial.  Like Parker Pyne, who advertises in the newspaper with “Are you happy?  If not, consult me,” Poirot is concerned with meeting the emotional needs of those around him.  

“Mon ami, that is your part,” said Poirot gently.  “To make her turn to you and forget.  I do not think you will find it very difficult.”

We like to think that time heals all wounds, but loss is forever.  A parent or spouse or close friend can never be replaced.  With time, we find ways to cope with our pain, but still, the hole in our heart remains.  By identifying those whose hurt seems the greatest, and who may best respond to our ministrations, we can help the wounded refocus their attention on the outside world.  In doing so, we serve not just this one person, but all of humanity.

“The Third-Floor Flat” can be found in Agatha Christie Masterpieces in Miniature: The Detectives.  The collected stories concern four of her greatest crime-solvers: Parker Pyne, Harley Quin, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Jane Marple.  

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