Talk:Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

Plot Hole

In contrast to the first case of Hercule Poirot, this last case has several plot holes:

• 1)Supposedly there was an autopsy in the body of sadistic killer Norton {aka X} which should have revealed the presence of a knock out drug; it thus would have dawned on the reader that it would have been impossible for Norton to have taken a knock out drug and then shoot himself in the head!!
• 2)Furthermore of all the persons at Styles the only obvious canidate who had a sleeping drought of the type in Norton's body was Poirot-therefore Poirot is the killer {as it turns out in the end-of course the reader would not know this detail -least they figure out the ending!!}
• 3) Another plot hole is that even after Norton's death-why did Piorot remove the files of "X" {Norton}'s cases?

1) An interesting point, but readers are not supposed to think that Norton killed himself. They should think that Norton was murdered, presumably by X. Similarly, they should think Poirot was murdered by X. Any evidence suggesting Norton's death was a murder only helps this.

2) I suppose you mean this as an extension of "1," which is not in fact a plot hole. Incidentally, are you sure the book mentions an autopsy? A bullet hole in the forehead is quite convincing to any coroner, and there are plenty of other examples in Christie of people dispensing with autopsies when the cause of death is obvious.

3) I don't remember the reasoning the book gives, but this still is not a plot hole. Poirot had solved the case and had wrapped it up as judge, jury and executioner. The case was closed. So he removed the files.

4) Poirot had already solved the case, but wanted to test Hastings. The drug Poirot gave was clearly stated as being enough to induce sleep for a novice, but Poirot has developed tolerance to it due to long usage. Poirot removed the case files of X to try to induce Hastings to really think about the case... giving the identify of X would have made it too easy. Christie's genius as a writer lived on as she makes Poirot the killer... perhaps the ultimate plot twist. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jclinard (talk • contribs) 01:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC).

--Ellissound 03:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Removed sentence

I've just removed the following sentence:

He is considered to fail all the previous records.

Perhaps the person who added it could explain exactly what the sentence means (it's not understandable English) and why it was at the very end of the entry, after the table. --70.72.19.133 10:02, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

real chronology of Poiriot?

If Poiriot had really existed::

• Poirot born 1850?
• HAstings born 1890?
• Poirot age 55 at his retirement in 1905?
• Poirot and Hastings first met each other in 1916
• Poirot and HAstings last met each other in 1946?
• Poirot dies and Hastings remaries age 55/56-second wife age 35

As an author can make a fictional characther live outside of a real timeline-thus Christie has Poirot living into the 1950's and 1960's-when he'd have been well over 100 years old!!!

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Cause of Poirot's Death?

I don't think the plot summary makes clear the cause of Poirot's death? It says how he moved the nitrate out of reach so he wasn't tempted to avoid death, but not how death itself was brought about. -- Ralph Corderoy (talk) 10:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Hastings mentions that Poirot had suffered multiple 'heart attacks.' MarkinBoston (talk) 00:29, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Poirot had been examined by Dr. Franklin who told Hastings (as OK'ed by Poirot) that Poirot's only had a few days to live due to his heart condition.

Synopsis

As of 18 Dec 2011, this section is almost completely wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.98.140.65 (talk) 16:36, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Swapping cups, and The Man Who Knew Too Much

Interesting that this story involves two cups (one poisoned) being inadvertently switched when somebody turns a revolving bookcase. That exact plot point is also in one of G K Chesterton's detective stories about The Man Who Knew Too Much. Did one influence the other? 86.164.246.89 (talk) 15:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Date setting

Can anyone add when the novel is set? Is it ever made explicit or can it be calculated? LookingGlass (talk) 17:32, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be set twenty-some years after Styles (explicitly said in this book to have occurred in 1916), which restricts it to between 1937 and 1946. Most likely around 1941–42. The evidence for this is:

1. In Chapter 15, an old woman recognizes Hastings from the last murder at Styles, "Twenty years ago and over."
2. Hastings appears to be in his fifties, because in Chapter 8: III he describes Elizabeth Cole as "a woman of between thirty and forty" and shortly afterwards he observes that "Unconsciously I had spoken as though she and I were contemporaries – but I realized suddenly that she was well over ten years my junior." If Hastings is about 30 in Styles (itself an estimate relying on some rough calculations) and say 55 in Curtain (and so rather flattering himself in his comparison to Miss Cole, she being at least 16 years younger), that makes it about 25 years later, c. 1941.

It also was Agatha Christie's usual practice to set her novels at the time they were written or would be published, although she may have pushed this one a little into the future to allow for the end of the war, which is mentioned and implied to be over. (Any allusion at all to WWII is unusual among her wartime novels; I believe only N or M? acknowledges the ongoing war, otherwise she seems to have aimed for escapism.) Of course, she could not know when the war would actually end, so this is not necessarily inconsistent with a 1941 or 1942 date, if she wrote it in 1940.

On the other hand, this estimate is inconsistent with The Murder on the Links (1923, presumably written 1922) being set contemporaneously, given that Judith Hastings has yet to be conceived in that book and is 21 in Curtain.

I think a plausible interpretation is that the Poirot novels written during the war were intended as tacitly back-dated to just before it, with the 1939-written stories later collected in The Labours of Hercules meant to represent Poirot's definitive retirement, followed by his death in Curtain (in a hypothetical post-war early-1940s) ending the series. When Christie picked Poirot up again after four years with The Hollow (1946), that plan was shelved, with the post-war stories rendering any attempt at chronological consistency hopeless. --Snarkibartfast (talk) 11:56, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

There is discussion of the time the novel is set in the section References to other works. It was written during the second World War, meant to be published after the war ended, to close the Poirot series. Demand for Poirot stories continued, perhaps beyond what the author could have known. The war is over, if one calculates the time of Hastings's marriage in the early 1920s, and time to have four children born, the youngest age 21 in the story. There is no mention of war time activity or limitations, no mention of rationing, or anything that would pin the year exactly.

The year cannot be made explicit, as the author did not make revisions to keep every detail in tune with changing laws and mores. I hope that is enough guess work on that, for a book published about 30 years after it was written, with a main character whose age is never given, he is simply old. In fact, I suggest that any further analysis of the ages of Poirot and Hastings be moved to the articles on each character, rather than as part of the article for this last-published novel. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:30, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the date of curtain would have been about 1946--30 years after Hastings and Piorot met in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" which takes place in 1916. Also it would have been timeline--Piorot retries 1905 [say age 45/50] from the Belgium police; 1916 he would have been about 56/61; in 1946 he would have been 86/91--his gray hair.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.49.242.65 (talk) 22:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

"Elephants Can Remember" makes specific reference to Ariadne Oliver's address books from 1968-1971, and this book obviously has to take place after that one. I have updated the page. 207.231.67.187 (talk) 21:47, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

That assumes that there is a consistent chronology within the series, while there is every reason to believe there is not. Snarkibartfast (talk) 20:29, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers § Reliable sources for a plot detail

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers § Reliable sources for a plot detail. Airbornemihir (talk) 18:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)