The Pleasures of Poirot: "The ABC Murders"
The classic Agatha Christie novel is compelling in its own right, but its adaptations aren't always successful.
Warning: Full spoilers for all versions of The ABC Murders follow.
In this week’s installment of “The Pleasures of Poirot,” I want to talk about The ABC Murders, which was published in 1936 and has had a rather extraordinary afterlife in terms of its on-screen legacy. It’s also a narratively interesting novel, in that it alternates between first person and third person, the former told from the viewpoint of Arthur Hastings, Poirot’s friend and ally, and various other characters, including Alexander Bonaparte Cust, a man suffering from epilepsy who becomes the prime suspect in a series of murders matching, as the title suggests, that alphabet. By suturing us into the perspective of the man who may have committed a number of brutal murders, Christie cleverly leads us to believe in his guilt, even as there is also a part of us that knows that this is too obvious to be true.
Which is, of course, where Poirot comes in. The murderer sends him a number of letters, each of which tells him the location of the next murder--each town beginning with a letter of the alphabet--teasing and taunting him for his inability to solve the murder. As it turns out, it’s not Cust at all but instead Franklin Clarke, the brother of the third victim and the man poised to inherit his substantial fortune after his terminally ill wife’s death. He manipulated Cust--who susceptible and impressionable epileptic--into serving as his stooge. Poirot, himself quite the master manipulator, informs Carmichael that his fingerprint has been found on the typewriter used to write the various letters, which gets the confession he needs. Of course, it’s not at all true, and Poirot wryly notes to his friend Hastings that he did it for his benefit.
What I especially enjoyed about this novel was how deftly woven it is. It’s clear from Hastings’ chapters that he really does hold Poirot in very high esteem, though it’s equally obvious that their values and ways of thinking about the world (and crime) are very different. While Poirot, always, views things through the lens of his “little grey cells” (that is, cerebrally and rationally), Hastings is much more likely to fall pretty sentiment, particularly when a pretty young woman is involved (and there are several in this book, including Thora Grey, the assistant to the murdered Carmichael Clarke). It’s part of what makes Hastings such a charming and delightful character.
All of that isn’t to say that Poirot is totally devoid of compassion; far from it. However, whereas Hastings is willing to grant women a lot of benefit of the doubt, Poirot reserves that for Cust, whom he rightly sees as something of a victim. In fact, at the end of the novel he suggests to Cust that he bargain with the newspapers to get a higher payment for his story. Poirot has a very strong moral compass, and it’s what allows him to shine his beneficence upon those who most deserve it. To top it off, he also advises Cust to get a new pair of glasses in an effort to reduce his headaches.
As for Cust himself: he is one of Christie’s finer creations. As is often the case with Christie’s novels, this character shows us what life is like for a soldier struggling to make a go of life in the aftermath of the First World War. While serving in the army gave him the chance to see himself as a man like any other, his life afterward has been a struggle, both because of his epilepsy and because he struggles to find gainful employment. It’s hard not to feel the same sense of sympathy as Poirot does, especially since we have already been sutured into his perspective thanks to Hastings’ reconstructions.
Furthermore, throughout the novel we see the ways in which the modern media have become an essential part of the ways in which murders are understood. As more and more victims pile up, the newspapers obviously increase their pressure on the police and on Poirot. Murders, in this imagining, are no longer things that take place behind closed doors, but are instead a key part of the public imagination, who clearly hunger for more sensation even as they want the danger to be taken away. The real world thus presses on the fiction, and we can’t help but be aware of the connection between the two.
Which brings us to the screen adaptations.
Let’s start with the earliest, the 1965 film The Alphabet Murders, starring Tony Randall as Poirot. I have to say that I am definitely not a fan of this version, for two reasons. First, there’s the casting. There’s no question that Tony Randall was a fantastic actor, and his portrayal of the fussy Felix Unger in The Odd Couple is spectacular. However, he is, to put it bluntly, awful as Poirot. It’s not just his execrable Belgian accent; he fails to capture anything about the Poirot that Christie gives us. Second, there’s the general atmosphere of the film, which relies far too much on slapstick. This approach works in something like The Pink Panther--which this film was clearly trying to imitate--but it’s all wrong for the works of Agatha Christie. It’s one of those instances where I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just create a new character and situations rather than butchering an existing property.
Though The Alphabet Murders is, to put it mildly, absolutely ridiculous and farcical, the ITV adaptation is, as was almost always the case with the earlier episodes of the series, quite faithful to the original novel. Suchet, in his usual magnificent style, simply is Poirot, and there’s an undeniable chemistry between Poirot and Hastings, exemplified in the former’s choice to gift the latter with a stuffed caiman from his outing in South America (it’s a joke that runs through the entire episode). As inspired a bit of casting as Suchet was, the same is true of Hugh Fraser, who embodies so much of what made the character so sympathetic in the novels. He has just the right mix of intelligence and naivete to make the performance ring true.
The casting of Philip Jackson as Japp is similarly inspired, and he manages to combine a sort of hard-bitten policeman persona with a light touch. Jackson’s portrayal allows us to see that, despite his bluster, Japp truly does look kindly on Poirot and sees him as a valuable ally in solving crimes that elude traditional police work.
This adaptation also brings out the importance of the modern media to the plot. At several points throughout the episode, newspapers come hurtling out of the background and splash into the foreground, showing us how the news media has become obsessed with the crimes. It is, perhaps, a bit obvious, but it does nevertheless demonstrate how sensationalist the media is in the modern era, when everyone is trying to find some means of escaping their everyday lives.
Lastly, there’s the newest adaptation, which came out a few years ago and starred John Maklovich as Poirot. Though it maintains the basic premise of the story, it dives into more detail on the various murder victims, and it gives Poirot a very different backstory than his novel counterpart. Rather than a policeman he was a priest, whose flock was slaughtered during World War I. It also excises several characters, including Hastings (who doesn’t appear at all) and Japp (who dies of a heart attack near the very beginning).
It’s also a much bleaker and more cynical version of the story than its predecessors, lacking the warmth of either The Alphabet Murders or the ITV adaptation. It is, in fact, often quite brutal, depicting the aftermath of the attacks in gruesome fashion. It also gives us much more detail about Cust’s living situation, rarely for the better. We see, for example, a fellow boarder with a huge swelling on the back of his neck, which occupies Cust’s (and the camera’s) attention for an almost obscene amount of time. Even more disturbing is the scene in which the landlady’s daughter steps on Cust’s back with her broken heels, creating an array of stigmata on his tortured flesh. It’s all just...too much, sometimes, particularly for an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s work, stripping away her signature gentility to expose the rotten heart beneath. The ABC Murders seems to be obsessed with bodies and their visceral abjection.
Then there’s John Malkovich. I have to admit that it was always going to be difficult for me to truly see him as Poirot, given my dedication to Suchet’s portrayal, but he does the best that he can. In keeping with the rest of the series’ aesthetic, his is a grittier and more somber portrayal of Poirot, showing him as a man whose best years are behind him. Though his brilliance is undiminished, he’s haunted by the brutality in his past and by the fact that most of his allies, most notably Japp, have died and left him alone. There are a few times when he lurches into the realm of the outright pathetic--as when his hair dye runs in the rain, leading to an embarrassing conversation with Rupert Grint’s Inspector Crome--but for the most part he gives us a Poirot that we can appreciate and admire, even if we don’t especially like him.
The adaptation does two things well, however. First, I very much liked this version of Franklin Carmichael. He’s a bit more compelling and charismatic than his counterpart in the ITV version, and he also has a history with Poirot. With his enigmatic yet charming smile, you can well believe that he’s a man who could commit a series of brutal murders, all while believing that he was doing something worthwhile (he informs Poirot that he thought that committing the crimes would give the aging detective a renewed purpose in life). It’s also worth noting that, in this version, he manages to manipulate Thora into aiding him in his crimes, largely because she is, in fact, in love with Carmichael and resents his wife (who more than returns the favor).
This adaptation also brings out an element that bubbles beneath the surface of many of the Poirot stories, and that is English xenophobia. Time and again throughout the series’ three episodes, we see how everyone mistrusts him because of his origins. This is the Depression, after all, and “foreigners” provide a convenient scapegoat for a British populace growing disenchanted with their leadership and with the police. Small wonder that, confronted with such unrelenting animus, Malcovich’s Poirot starts to feel rather sad and weary, especially since even the police turn their backs on him (it turns out that Japp was forced into retirement once it became clear that Poirot was not, as he claimed, a policeman).
Everything about this adaptation seems designed to make us feel some mixture of horror, unease and, at its grimmest moments, outright despair. No one comes out of this affair especially happy: Cust lies comatose (his epilepsy being the result of a brain tumor rather than an injury from the war), Franklin marches off to his hanging, and Betty Barnard’s surviving sister ends up with the man, but it’s quite clear that their marriage will not be a happy one. And, though Poirot has managed to solve the murders, he doesn’t seem to be especially victorious. After all, nothing much about British society has changed as a result of his actions; it’s highly likely that they’ll continue to view him with the same mixture of contempt and hatred as they did before. All, it seems, has been for nothing. Small wonder that our last shot of him shows him standing, his face an enigma, his thoughts as inscrutable as ever.
As different as they are, these various adaptations show us just how flexible and enduringly popular Christie’s works remain. Time and again, we’ve seen how different eras reinterpret them, adding layers and glosses that reflect much about both the television industry and society at large. One can’t help but wonder: what will the next generation make of The ABC Murders?