On one of these chairs sat Hercule Poirot, neatly – in the middle of the chair. Opposite him, in another chair, sat Dr Burton, Fellow of All Souls, sipping appreciatively at a glass of Poirot’s Château Mouton Rothschild. There was no neatness about Dr Burton. He was plump, untidy and beneath his thatch of white hair beamed a rubicund and benign countenance. He had a deep wheezy chuckle and the habit of covering himself and everything round him with tobacco ash. In vain did Poirot surround him with ash trays.
Dr Burton was asking a question.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Why Hercule?’
‘You mean, my Christian name?’
‘Hardly a Christian name,’ the other demurred.
Warmed by the Château Mouton Rothschild, Dr Burton then launched into a short lecture on Greek mythology and, in particular, on Poirot’s epic namesake and his twelve famous labours. At first Poirot chose to be unimpressed: ‘Take this – Hercules – this hero! Hero indeed? What was he but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal tendencies!’ But further research in the calf-bound classical dictionaries obediently provided by Miss Lemon inspired Poirot – once again in a retirement mode – to a grand scheme.
Why not bow out dramatically from his life as a detective by modelling himself on the Hercules of old?
In the period before his final retirement he would accept twelve cases, no more, no less. And those twelve cases should be selected with special reference to the twelve labours of ancient Hercules. Yes, that would not only be amusing, it would be artistic, it would be spiritual.
With this lofty resolve, Poirot sat back confidently in expectation of a case to match Hercules’s first Labour, the capture of the Nemean Lion.
Naturally he did not expect a case to present itself actually involving a flesh and blood lion. It would be too much of a coincidence should he be approached by the Directors of the Zoological Gardens to solve a problem for them involving a real lion.
No, here symbolism must be involved. The first case must concern some celebrated public figure, it must be sensational and of the first importance! Some master criminal – or, alternatively, someone who was a lion in the public eye. Some well-known writer, or politician, or painter – or even royalty?
But the lion, when he made his appearance, was none of these. He was small and snuffly, his name was Shan Tung, and he was a Pekinese dog. Over the years Poirot had resented being consulted about kidnapped lap-dogs, but in the story of ‘The Nemean Lion’2 he unerringly perceived a splendid case of mythology in the making.
In ancient Greece many would-be heroes attempted to slay the nine-headed Hydra, but only Hercules proved equal to the task. In the case of ‘The Lernean Hydra’,3 when appealed to by a country doctor whose village was rife with rumours that he had poisoned his wife, Poirot knew at once he had found his second Labour:
‘We are going into the country, Georges,’ said Hercule Poirot to his valet.
‘Indeed, sir?’ said the imperturbable George.
‘And the purpose of our journey is to destroy a monster with nine heads.’
‘Really, sir? Something after the style of the Loch Ness Monster?’
‘Less tangible than that. I did not refer to a flesh and blood animal, Georges.’
Together, in Market Loughborough, Poirot and George beheaded the monster.
In legendary times Hercules pursued a gold-homed hind across a magic landscape for a year before capturing her, and in the story ‘The Arcadian Deer’4 Poirot, his usually prudent namesake, spent more time and money than he could ever have imagined, and with no fee in sight, to find the lost sweetheart of a village mechanic – but then Poirot always was a romantic and matchmaker at heart.
The end of the third Labour found Poirot in Switzerland, where he decided to remain for a short holiday in the Alps. It was in snow and mountains such as these that an earlier Hercules had tracked the fabled boar of Erymanthia. None of the dangers he encountered, however, was greater than those faced by a Poirot coaxed into aiding the Swiss Police in the capture of a vicious master criminal, Marrascaud.
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