The Adventure of the Clapham Cook

Alright, so it's time to review our first episode.  I've decided to go through the episodes in chronological order.  The beginning is, after all, a very good place to start.  So first up, Season 1, Episode 1: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook.  It's not my favourite episode.  But, I'll say this about it: it's less infuriating than the original short story, which more or less had smoke pouring out of my ears.  The thing about Agatha Christie is that she's very much a product of her time and class.  Which is to say, her opinion of the "lower classes" is...less than flattering.  Since my background is working-class English, I find this particularly annoying.  Had I been born a hundred years earlier, that would be me she was talking about!  (Actually, as far as I know, none of my family were in service; they were mill and factory workers.  But the point still stands.)  Christie also often comes across as racist, or a the very least, ignorant of other races.  This isn't exactly her fault.  As Nelson DeMille puts it, "one can be a product only of one's own era, not anyone else's."  And, in all fairness, Christie takes plenty of pot-shots at the English middle-class.  Still, the classism in her writing can grate, and it's an aspect of the stories that the tv series, being made in a more enlighted era, tends to downplay.

Anyway, on to the episode.  We open with a clearly agitated man tying up a large trunk with some rather thick rope.  He then grabs some clothes and knocks over a vase, before pausing to stare off into space in the most shifty manner possible.  Seriously, this guy may as well have a sign on his chest saying "I'm up to no good, ask me how!"

We then switch to an outside view of Hercule Poirot's office building, which I think is also his apartment building.  I guess that saves him the trouble of taking his work home with him.  We cut to Poirot's office and now we get our first look at the eponymous character and his dimwitted sidekick.  Hercule Poirot is played by David Suchet who is excellent in the role.  Seriously, he is Poirot, right down to the egg-shaped head.  He has the voice--much higher than Suchet's normal speaking voice--the accent, the arrogance...everything.  The only thing Suchet is lacking is the proper age.  In the novels, Hercule Poirot is old--it never says exactly how old, but he's already retired from the Belgian police force--when the series starts in 1917 and positively ancient by the time it ends, sometime in the 1960s.  I worked it out once and figured that Poirot must have been about 110 when he finally kicked the bucket.  Some readers have gotten around this by theorizing that perhaps Poirot retired early and given that he was forced to flee Belgium during WWI, I suppose that is a possibility, but, still, he's clearly no spring chicken.  Suchet was 43 when he began playing the role and is 66 now, so definitely a tad young for the part.  He's aging well too, though if you watch one of the earliest episodes and one of the most recent back-to-back, you can see the difference, though it's not so much that he looks older as that he's put on weight.  There's some debate about whether or not Agatha Christie herself would approve of Suchet's performance.  She was notorious for disliking most portrayals of the character (then again, she was notorious for disliking the character).  Still, I think she'd have to be a pretty picky woman indeed to object to Suchet in the role.

Arthur Hastings is played by Hugh Fraser who also carries the role well.  Actually, all the main characters are well-played, the casting in this series is excellent.  I have to admit that Fraser, who is tall, thin and good looking enough that I wouldn't kick him out of bed, is not at all how I pictured Hastings.  I had always imagined Hastings as a rather dumpy middle-aged man, despite the fact that--as my father pointed out--he's a Captain in the bloody army.  Given Hasting's penchant for hitting on every pretty young thing who crosses his path, I think the Fraser version works a lot better than mine.  Now, of course, I can't picture anyone else as Hastings.  Fraser has excellent comic timing and manages to convey Hastings' complete and other idiocy, while still--occasionally--maintaining a decent amount of dignity.  It's not his fault his character doesn't have the brains God gave a grapefruit.

At any rate, as we meet our characters, Hastings is reading out crimes from the newspaper, none of which interest Poirot, who apparently is too damn important to worry about anything other than...a spot of grease on his suit.

Example:

Hastings (about a bank robbery): That's a king's ransom, Poirot!
Poirot: When it is used to ransom a king, then it becomes interesting to Poirot.

O...K...

At this point, Poirot's secretary, Miss Lemon, pokes her head in the room.  Miss Lemon, as played by Pauline Moran, has little in common with the Miss Lemon from the books.  For one thing, she's an actual character, while the Miss Lemon in the books was mostly kept in the background.  For another thing, she has an actual personality.  In the books, Miss Lemon, while a most efficient secretary, is about as interesting as a painting of a polar bear in a snowstorm.  She doesn't seem to have anything even vaguely resembling a personal life and her greatest dream is to develope the perfect filing system.  (Earth to Lemon: we have one!  It's called alphabetical order!)  The Miss Lemon of the tv series is a far more fleshed out and interesting character and--again--very well acted.

It turns out that Miss Lemon is here to inform Poirot that a Mrs. Todd is here to see him.  Hastings rambles for a bit about absolutely nothing of interest--as is his wont--and then Mrs. Todd is shown in.  Dear Mrs. Todd has all the charm of...well...Hastings and if I was Poirot, I would've smacked her upside the head, particularly when she asks if he planted the bit in the paper about him being such a super detective.  Poirot however is more restrained, though the veins in his forehead do stand out in a rather alarming manner.  (Great physical acting on Suchet's part!)  But then, he spends the majority of his time with Hastings, so clearly he has a high tolerance for obnoxious morons.

Anyhoo, it turns out that Mrs. Todd wants Poirot to find her missing cook.  Oh, the cook doesn't appear to be in any actual danger or anything--and if she was, I highly doubt Mrs. Todd would care--she just quit her job and left the area, which apparently is a great affront to Mrs. Todd, who might have to learn how to boil an egg on her own or something.  Given that Poirot just minutes ago dismissed actual crimes as not being important enough to drag him away from his dry cleaning, it's no surprise that he expresses less than avid interest in Madam Todd's misadventure.

Mrs Todd responds by reading Poirot the riot act, accusing him of only being interested in high level cases and not realizing that, as she puts it: "a good cook's a good cook.  And when you lose one it's as much to you as pearls are to some fine lady."  She has a point, but it's a little hard to have pity.  Partly, because she's so irritating--and, trust me, she's only going to get worse--and partly because this is another example of Christie's bourgeois bias.  I mean, do you have a cook?  No?  And you yet you're managing to make it through the day?  Amazing!  I actually had a cook once.  It's nice, but not what I would deem one of the necessities of life.

But Poirot backs down and agrees to take the case.  Maybe he just figures it's the easiest way to get Mrs. Todd out of his sight.  If so, it doesn't work, as the next thing we see is the two of them in the back of a car on their way to Mrs. Todd's house in Clapham.  It turns out that the cook has just recently sent for her trunk.  Poirot asks Mrs. Todd to describe the cook and, to her credit, she is able to give a fairly detailed and positive description.  Mrs. Todd also claims that there was no disagreement between her and the cook, so we can assume that either this cook--whose name, if you're interested, is Eliza Dunn--is somewhat hard of hearing or that Mrs. Todd kept her charming self out of the kitchen.

As we arrive at Mrs. Todd's townhouse--which is nice enough, but nothing particularly fancy--we discover that Hastings has also come along for the ride.  We also meet Mrs. Todd's only other servant, the housemaid, Annie. Annie's theory is that Miss Dunn has been taken by white slavers.  Apparently Miss Dunn was always warning Annie about this possibility, though after listening to Annie talk for 30 seconds, I'm fairly certain the slavers would've returned her rather quickly.  Seriously, is everyone in this episode a blithering idiot?  But, of course, Annie is a typical Christie servant: paranoid, melodramatic and not overly bright.  At least she's cute.  Anyway, Poirot points out that had Miss Dunn been taken by white slavers she would not have been likely to send for her trunk.  We further learn that the trunk was already packed and corded when the carriers came for it, so clearly Miss Dunn's absence was planned.  Yet, the last conversation Miss Dunn had with Annie was about what to serve for dinner that night.  Hmmm...curiouser and curiouser...

Another conversation with Mrs. Todd--I'll take pity and spare you the details--reveals that she and her husband also have a paying guest in the house, a Mr. Simpson who works at a bank--the same bank that we earlier heard had been robbed, and by one of its own clerks at that.  Deciding to take their leave and return in an hour when Mr. Todd and Mr. Simpson will be home, Poirot and Hastings retire to a nearby park, where Hastings comments on the coincidence of Mr. Simpson working at the robbed bank and notes that Simpson must have known the robber.

Poirot:  Perhaps.  Or, possibly, [the robber] visited Simpson, fell in love with the cook and he persuaded her to accompany him on his flight.

Yeah, Poirot has his own version of Shut the fuck up, Hastings!

We then return to Todd Manor where Poirot and Hastings are meeting with Mr. Todd, who doesn't seem perturbed by his cook's disappearance (well, men never think of these things, do they?).  They then meet Mr. Simpson and...sinister music starts playing.  WTF?  Obviously, this means something, so I go back and check the opening scene and, sure enough, Simpson is Mr. Up-To-No-Good who was tying up the trunk at the beginning of the episode.  Was I really supposed to remember that?  Fuck you, show!  How dare you expect me to pay attention!?  Yeah, I'm always missing stuff like that.  My audio memory is excellent, but my visual memory pretty much sucks.

Anyway, unless you are very, very dim, you've probably figured out that the trunk he was packing was Miss Dunn's.  Which begs the question, why?  And why was he so het up about it that he destroyed a perfectly good vase?

The conversation with Simpson doesn't reveal much.  He claims to have barely known the cook, but he's acting nearly as shifty as he did before and if I notice it, you can bet your sweet ass Poirot does too.

Later that night, Poirot and Hastings discuss the case.  Hastings first says he suspects Mr. Todd of being involved, then says he doesn't even think there's been a crime at all.  MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND, HASTINGS!  Poirot, for his part, finds the case "full of contradictory features" and is quite interested.

We then cut to Poirot in his office, freaking the fuck out.  Enjoy this one, kiddies, you won't see it very often.  Poirot is usually the definition of composed, but in this case, he's storming around his office and practically foaming at the mouth.  It turns out that Mr. Todd has sent him a letter--this was back in the days when snail mail was actually delivered within a day--dismissing his services.  And, just to add insult to injury, he's enclosed a guinea as compensation.  Now, I don't know how much a guinea was worth back in the thirties...actually, come to think of it, I don't know what the fuck a guinea is.  Can't these people just use the Euro like everyone else?  But, anyway, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that this mysterious guinea thing is somewhat below Poirot's usual fee.  Poirot is now deterimined to get to the bottom of this matter, even if it ends up costing him money.  Because Poirot is just calm and reasonable like that.

Poirot begins his personal investigation by posting an advertisement in the paper saying that it would be to Miss Dunn's advantage to contact him.  Poirot tasks Hastings with contacting domestic agencies and then "pops" off to London to investigate that bank robbery he found so boring until it turned out to be tied up with the case of a disappearing domestic.  It turns out that Simpson was actually absent on the day of the robbery.

And now we meet the last of our regular characters, Chief Inspector Japp, as he asks some questions of Mr. Simpson.  Japp is played by Philip Jackson and is a rather contradictory character.  On the one hand, I like Japp.  And I don’t just mean that I like him more than I like Hastings, because, quite frankly, I like syphilis more than I like Hastings.  No, I actually like the guy.  On the other hand, as far as actual detective work goes, I rather doubt he could find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight.  Given that he is lauded throughout the series as being an excellent detective and one of Scotland Yard's finest, this makes me think that 1930s London must have been an excellent time and place to be a criminal.

During the course of the conversation between Japp and Simpson, we discover that the bonds were almost certainly taken from the bank the day before the robbery was discovered, meaning that Simpson was not absent on the day of the actual robbery.  Simpson then spots Poirot and mentions their meeting of the day before to Japp.  We then cut to Japp talking to Poirot.  Japp assumes that Poirot is investigating the bank robbery, but Poirot assures him that he is working on another case, one of "national importance."  Japp is happy to hear that since he'd heard a rumour that Poirot had been reduced to investigating missing domestics.  Ooh, BURN!

It takes several scenes of staring at the phone (and turning down other cases) before Poirot receives a response from Eliza Dunn.  According to Miss Dunn, she has already received her "legacy," thanks all the same.  Somewhat confused, Poirot and Hastings take off on the train to track her down.  This gives Poirot the opportunity to insult the English countryside, calling it a desert.  Yeah, Poirot is not keen on nature and pure country air.  A man after my own heart, I must say.

Sure enough, they track down Eliza Dunn, who, it turns out, has become a lady of leisure with her own house, courtesy of her legacy.  It also turns out that Miss Dunn had written a letter for Mrs. Todd and had had no intention of disappearing.  On her last day out, she was stopped by a gentleman who told her an old friend of her grandmother's (in Nigeria, one assumes) had left her a house and some money in her will.  She was suspicious until he showed her an official looking letter and claimed to be a solicitor named Benjamin Crotchett.  The only stipulation to her sudden windfall was that she not be in service.  Miss Dunn was understandably disappointed, but Mr. Crotchett came up with the idea that, hey, didn't Miss Dunn actually leave her employment this morning, before he met her?  He had to rather ram this idea into her head like a railway spike, but eventually she agreed to go off immediately on the train and have him send all of her belongings after her.  Which worked out perfectly.  Well, except for one little thing: he sent her belongings wrapped in brown paper, rather than in her trunk.  She assumed that Mrs. Todd kept the trunk out of spite, which, in all fairness, does sound like something she would do.

Next thing we know, Poirot is in a phone booth, trying to get ahold of Japp (damn the days before cellphones!) and shouting quite agitatedly that Japp needs to be looking for Simpson, rather than the alleged robber (whose name is Davis).  He's still shouting when Hastings physically drags him out of the phone booth before their train takes off without them.  Wow, was Hastings just useful?  Stop the world, I want to get off!

During the train ride back to London, Hastings wants to know what the heck Simpson has to do with anything.  Poirot accuses Hastings of having let his "leetle grey cells" go on vacation.  Dude, you have to have brain cells before you can lose them!  With great patience, Poirot manages to lead Hastings to the fairly obvious conclusion that Benjamin Crotchett was really Simpson in a fake beard and glasses.  (This is a convention that Christie uses a lot and which must have been a pain in the ass to translate to a visual medium.)

Next thing we know, Poirot is back at Todd Manor where he encouters a police constable who accuses him of being--of all things!--French.  No, no, no, Poirot is a Belgian and don't you forget it!  He is then accosted by Mrs. Todd who rants on about how he was paid off very well and what is he doing bringing policemen to her house!?  sigh  It pains me to do this, but...SHUT THE FUCK UP, MRS. TODD!  That's right, the first SHUT THE FUCK UP of Shut the Fuck Up, Hastings does not even go to Hastings.  That's how irritating I find Mrs. Todd.

Things do not get better for Poirot as Japp appears and tells him that Simpson appears to be a fine, upstanding man who has gone off to visit family.  Poirot is now reduced to asking Annie for help.  Annie, of all people!  The girl who makes Hastings look like an intellectual giant!  Annie confirms that Eliza Dunn's trunk was picked up and, what's more, it was packed and very heavy and labelled for Eliza Dunn, to be called for at Twickenham Station (or someplance like that).

And now Poirot and Hastings are at yet another railway station.  Geez, I hope these guys have the 1930s railway equivalent of airmiles!  Hastings wants to know why Crotchett (aka Simpson) would want to play such a hoax, particularly as Eliza Dunn did get her house.  Poirot theorizes that Miss Dunn is unlikely to have more than a 6 month lease on that house.  And this is where the tv episode manages to improve on the original short story.  In the story, Poirot made a comment about Miss Dunn being gullible, like most people of her class.  Which...SHUT THE FUCK UP, AGATHA!  Seriously, with comments like that, I wouldn't be surprised if her servants were spitting in her food.  Not that Miss Dunn, might not have been a bit naive, but, hey, at least when Hastings and Poirot found her after he mysterious disappearance, she didn't claim to have no memory of the event!

So what did Crotchett/Simpson want so badly that he went to all this trouble to get it?  A battered old trunk.  Not just any old trunk, a respectable trunk.  (Yeah, not like those slutty trunks!  They're just asking for trouble!)  And for what did he want such a trunk?  Well, to put the body in, naturally!

 Hastings: What do you mean body?  What body?  Whose body?  I mean to say, if there's going to be bodies all over the place...


No offense, Artie--because that was actually pretty funny--but if you don't like bodies, you might want to find a new pal to hang around.

Poirot and Hastings attempt to pick up this trunk, but it turns out that it's already gone, courtesy of Simpson/Crotchett who claimed Eliza Dunn was his aunt and she wanted the trunk sent on to Glasgow.  He's a busy boy, our Simpson.  The porter who tells them this is kind of an asshole, an obstructive bureaucrat, you know the type.  However, with a little flattery, he shares his opinion that the man he talked to (Crotchett/Simpson) was on his way to Bolivia, since he was carrying a wad of Bolivian notes.  He could tell because they said "Bolivia" on them.  Poirot declares the porter to be a genius.  Well, compared to Hastings, anyone would seem such.  As an example, Hastings checks out ships to South America and declares that there are no sailings to Bolivia.  Poirot points out to him that you don't generally find many sailings to landlocked countries.  Hastings then wants to know if they are looking for Simpson or for the trunk and Poirot has to remind him that they already know the trunk is in Glasgow.  GROW A FUCKING BRAIN, HASTINGS!  Or at least invest in an atlas.

Then its off to another frustrating meeting with Japp, where Poirot has to try and convince him that it was Simpson, not Davis, who robbed the bank.  While they are talking, the trunk is located in Glasgow.  Japp and Poirot are notified by phone and Poirot requests that it be opened.  He feels that they can ignore that pesky warrant business (they had warrants in the 1930s?) because there's a body in the trunk.  And...

NO, THERE FUCKING ISN'T!  I'm not sure exactly how long it's been since Eliza Dunn took off, but it must have been at least a week by this point and bodies smell.  There is no way that trunk has been sitting around for a week and no one has noticed.  At the very least the officer who just found the trunk would have noticed something amiss.

But I digress.  According to Poirot, it is Davis in the trunk.  Poirot's theory (which we all know is correct because he's Poirot and while he does occasionally hold the idiot ball, this is not one of those times) is that Davis stole the bonds on Wednesday, knowing the theft would not be discovered until the following day.  On Thursday, he plays hooky--as one does when one has just ripped off one's employer--finds Davis on his lunch hour and invites him to Chateau Todd, which is empty at the time.  He kills Davis and then has to dispose of the body.  Hense the need for Eliza Dunn's trunk.

I have to admit, that surprised me a little.  I thought it would turn out that Simpson and Davis were in cahoots and that Simpson killed Davis so he wouldn't have to share the loot.  But, no, Davis was apparently pure as the driven snow.  Maybe that's why his corpse didn't smell.

Poirot, Japp and Hastings then accost Simpson as he is about to set sail...not for Bolivia, but for Venezuela.  Meh, close enough.

Finally, we see Poirot hanging his cheque for one guinea on his wall, to remind himself that even seemingly trivial cases can actually be of great importance.  Yeah...no offense, dude, but you caught a thief and murderer, it's not like you rescued a kidnapped Prime Minister or anything.

Anyway, that's our first episode.  Not the best in the series and certainly not the best example of Hastings being...well...Hastings, but one must start somewhere.