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Poirot vs Holmes: Cases of Derivation
Jan. 7th, 2019 10:06 pmI’ve finished watching the entire series of Poirot and now am onto some short stories and novels. While Arthur Conan Doyle admitted that Holmes was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin, Poirot, in his turn, is heavily influenced by Holmes, especially in early works. Let’s have a closer view, taking as examples three short stories.
Part 1: The Veiled Lady (1925)
First of all, short stories are written from Hasting’s POV which is a direct reference to Watson and Dupin’s nameless companion. At the beginning of this story Poirot is getting restless without a case, just like Holmes does. But unlike Holmes, who laments the lack of ingenuity in criminals, Poirot is so self-important that he seriously assumes that criminals are too afraid of him to commit any crimes.
Then the events unfold roughly in the same way as in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (1904): no sooner than Poirot says, “To work against the law, it would be pleasing, for a change”, a pretty lady of high society comes to him seeking his help against a blackmailer. She is engaged to a duke, there’s her compromising letter, and she doesn’t have sufficient means to buy it back. So she asks Poirot to negotiate. The blackmailer shows up to Poirot’s flat, but the negotiations prove to be futile. Pretty much a carbon copy, isn’t it?
Poirot decides to burgle the house of the blackmailer with the help of Hastings. Here the plagiarism borrowing becomes awkward because for a man who prefers to solve cases avoiding leg work it’s rather out character. As they proceed with their plan at night, we learn that Poirot visited the blackmailer’s house earlier under a false identity to ensure an easy access later. No, he didn’t get engaged to a maid but fooled the housekeeper. Points to Holmes for using his charm. Points to Poirot for not breaking a girl’s heart. I guess he didn’t have the looks?
The burglary is far less dramatic: there’s no hand holding behind the curtains, no chases through the garden and narrow escapes, no witnessing of the blackmailer being murdered by his former victim. Nope. Poirot just finds what he was looking for. The blackmailer is killed offstage somewhere in Holland. The lady and the bloke who pretended to be the blackmailer when he talked to Poirot are actually two crooks who had robbed a jewellery shop and had been in league with the real blackmailer until he decided not to share with them and hid the jewels in his house.
Having read this story, I remain as perplexed as I was after watching the episode of the TV series. This goes beyond being simply inspired. It’s a rip-off, and a bland one at that. The action, the tension, the excitement of CHAS are gone. It’s not as if Mrs. Christie couldn’t come up with original plots of her own—she could and did most successfully. If it’s a “form of flattery”, as E. W. Hornung put it in his dedication to ACD in The Amateur Cracksman, it’s a rather unsatisfying form.
Part 1: The Veiled Lady (1925)
First of all, short stories are written from Hasting’s POV which is a direct reference to Watson and Dupin’s nameless companion. At the beginning of this story Poirot is getting restless without a case, just like Holmes does. But unlike Holmes, who laments the lack of ingenuity in criminals, Poirot is so self-important that he seriously assumes that criminals are too afraid of him to commit any crimes.
Then the events unfold roughly in the same way as in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton (1904): no sooner than Poirot says, “To work against the law, it would be pleasing, for a change”, a pretty lady of high society comes to him seeking his help against a blackmailer. She is engaged to a duke, there’s her compromising letter, and she doesn’t have sufficient means to buy it back. So she asks Poirot to negotiate. The blackmailer shows up to Poirot’s flat, but the negotiations prove to be futile. Pretty much a carbon copy, isn’t it?
Poirot decides to burgle the house of the blackmailer with the help of Hastings. Here the plagiarism borrowing becomes awkward because for a man who prefers to solve cases avoiding leg work it’s rather out character. As they proceed with their plan at night, we learn that Poirot visited the blackmailer’s house earlier under a false identity to ensure an easy access later. No, he didn’t get engaged to a maid but fooled the housekeeper. Points to Holmes for using his charm. Points to Poirot for not breaking a girl’s heart. I guess he didn’t have the looks?
The burglary is far less dramatic: there’s no hand holding behind the curtains, no chases through the garden and narrow escapes, no witnessing of the blackmailer being murdered by his former victim. Nope. Poirot just finds what he was looking for. The blackmailer is killed offstage somewhere in Holland. The lady and the bloke who pretended to be the blackmailer when he talked to Poirot are actually two crooks who had robbed a jewellery shop and had been in league with the real blackmailer until he decided not to share with them and hid the jewels in his house.
Having read this story, I remain as perplexed as I was after watching the episode of the TV series. This goes beyond being simply inspired. It’s a rip-off, and a bland one at that. The action, the tension, the excitement of CHAS are gone. It’s not as if Mrs. Christie couldn’t come up with original plots of her own—she could and did most successfully. If it’s a “form of flattery”, as E. W. Hornung put it in his dedication to ACD in The Amateur Cracksman, it’s a rather unsatisfying form.
