Poirot's Early Cases

Plot summaries

In The Affair at the Victory Ball, Chief Inspector Japp seeks Poirot's help after a costumed ball ends in murder. Viscount Cronshaw, dressed as Harlequin, is stabbed through the heart with a table knife; the next morning, actress Coco Courtenay is found dead from a cocaine overdose. Poirot deduces that the person seen in the Harlequin costume after the murder must have been an impostor, and identifies the killer as Christopher Davidson, who was supplying Coco with drugs.

Davidson killed Cronshaw to prevent exposure, then gave Coco a lethal dose of cocaine and returned to the ball in a Harlequin costume under his Pierrot outfit. In The Adventure of the Clapham Cook, Mrs Todd of Clapham asks Poirot to investigate the sudden disappearance of her cook, Eliza Dunn. Eliza had left without notice and later sent for her trunk. Poirot places advertisements and visits Eliza, who explains that a solicitor told her she inherited a cottage in Carlisle and £300 a year, provided she leave domestic service immediately.

She accepted, gave the solicitor a resignation letter, and took a train north; her belongings were shipped in paper parcels, not her trunk.

Literary significance and reception

Maurice Richardson in The Observer (22 September 1974) called Hastings so dumb he makes Watson look like Leibnitz, but concluded the stories communicate a unique Christie euphoria. Robert Barnard noted that while the collection consists of early stories published in the US but not Britain, the standard is distinctly higher than those in Poirot Investigates.

Film, television or theatrical adaptations

Wasp's Nest was the first Agatha Christie story adapted for television, in a live transmission on 18 June 1937, restricted to the London area. All stories in the collection were adapted for the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot, starring David Suchet as Poirot, Hugh Fraser as Hastings, Philip Jackson as Japp, and Pauline Moran as Miss Lemon. Fifteen stories were directly adapted; one story was merged into another episode, and two were reworked with new titles.

Series One adaptations include The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (8 January 1989), which adds Japp and Miss Lemon; The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly (22 January 1989), which replaces Inspector McNeil with Japp and changes the plot; The Third Floor Flat (5 February 1989), faithful except for adding Hastings and Miss Lemon and replacing Inspector Rice with Japp; Problem at Sea (19 February 1989), which adds Hastings and replaces the stewardess with a little girl; and The King of Clubs (5 March 1989), which adds Japp and alters the setting and characters. Series Two includes The Veiled Lady (14 January 1990).

Publication history

The collection was first published in hardcover by Collins Crime Club in London in September 1974 (256 pp), and by Dodd Mead and Company in New York later that year (250 pp). A large-print edition by G.K. Hall & Company appeared in 1975 (491 pp). Fontana Books issued a paperback in 1978, and Ulverscroft released a large-print hardback in 1990. All but five of the stories first appeared in the UK in The Sketch magazine, following a suggestion from editor Bruce Ingram, who admired Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

The Sketch stories include The Affair at the Victory Ball (7 March 1923), The King of Clubs (21 March 1923), The Plymouth Express (4 April 1923, later reworked as The Mystery of the Blue Train), The Chocolate Box (23 May 1923), The Veiled Lady (3 October 1923), The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly (10 October 1923), The Market Basing Mystery (17 October 1923, later expanded as Murder in the Mews), The Submarine Plans (7 November 1923, later reworked as The Incredible Theft), The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (14 November 1923), The Lost Mine (21 November 1923), The Cornish Mystery (28 November 1923), The Double Clue (5 December 1923), and The Lemesurier Inheritance (18 December 1923).

The remaining stories were published elsewhere: Double Sin in the Sunday Dispatch (23 September 1928), Wasp's Nest in the Daily Mail (20 November 1928), The Third Floor Flat in Hutchinson's Adventure & Mystery Story Magazine (January 1929), How Does Your Garden Grow? in The Strand (August 1935), and Problem at Sea in The Strand (February 1936, as Poirot and the Crime in Cabin 66).