Poirot and Me (22 page)

facts to support a theory.’ That was the

Poirot I knew and loved, and it gave me

enormous pleasure to say the line.

My daughter, Katherine, appeared in One,

Two, as a schoolgirl in the park. She and

Sheila happened to be on set one day, when

we needed some extras. It was not the only

time one or both of the children worked

alongside me. A few years later, they were

extras in a Tube train segment, only to find

that, when the episode finally aired, they

had been left on the cutting-room floor. They

were very miffed.

After the filming was over, Sheila and I, as

well as Robert and Katherine, who were then

ten and eight, took off on holiday in our new

narrow boat, called Lark Rise. It was our

second boat, after Prima Donna, which had

been our first home together and the one we

lived on while we toured in rep. We paid all

the proper charges for moorings, but even

so, narrow boats make wonderful ‘digs’ for

touring actors because they provide an

economical place to live and you can usually

find a mooring not too far from the theatre.

This time, we toured our old haunts, the

canals of the Midlands, hiding away from

everyone and enjoying being a family

together. I had been so busy, it was a relief

to be alone with the people I cared most

about in the world, away from the pressure.

I knew in my heart that we had done a

good job with our latest three films – they

felt right somehow. But that series also

underlined

something

that

was

very

important to me in the wake of all those

letters: the fact that it contradicted the rule

that seemed to say that even very good

television series begin to fall off after a

while, as their quality seems to dilute. I was

delighted that our Poirot films had not done

that.

The only shadow on the horizon, as we

travelled the canals, was that my dear, dear

mother Joan, who’d been a dancer alongside

Evelyn Laye in the 1922 musical hit Lilac

Time, before she married my father Jack,

was not well again. There had been

difficulties over the past few years, but as

1992 began, I was beginning to become very

worried about her indeed. To be an actor is

wonderful, but there is nothing more

important than family.

Chapter 10

‘I COULD BE SAYING

GOODBYE TO HIM,

PERHAPS FOR A YEAR,

PERHAPS FOREVER’

What I feared might happen turned into

a bleak reality not long after we came

back from our family trip on Lark Rise along

England’s canals. My dear mum had gone

into hospital for a hip operation just before

Christmas, but some time after she came out

of the anaesthetic, a blood embolism sent

her into a deep coma, which began on New

Year’s Eve 1991. She came out of the coma

in February, but the doctors told us that she

would simply never be the same again, and

on 5 May 1992 she died, at the age of just

seventy-six, with her three sons, John, Peter

and me, at her bedside.

It was a horrible and protracted death,

which was very hard on her, and, of course,

on all the rest of the family. Going to visit

her was a dreadful ordeal, as we all knew

she simply could not survive, and yet we all

wanted her to. I do not think that John,

Peter and I, her three sons, ever imagined

living without her.

Yet, even then, at this dark point in my

life, it was as if the ghost of Dame Agatha

was looking over my shoulder. At the very

moment we heard of my mother’s descent

into a coma, Sheila and I were staying at the

Imperial Hotel in Torquay, the place that

was one of the inspirations for some of

Dame Agatha’s stories. She was, of course,

born in the town and her house, Greenway,

was not far away, on the River Dart in south

Devon.

I was devastated. My mother had meant so

much to me. Without her support, I would

never have become an actor. It was she who

persuaded my father to let me go to drama

school – very much against his will. In fact,

she became a legend at LAMDA when I was

a student there, turning up to watch me

whenever there was a public performance. In

one play I appeared in, my character had to

call out for his mother at the start of the

second act, which, of course, I did – only for

my mother to call out ‘Yes!’ from the stalls.

We had to start the second act again.

Mum also developed a technique for

letting me know that she and my father were

in the audience, by coughing loudly in my

first dramatic pause in the production.

Throughout every single day of my career,

she

was

a

wonderful

source

of

encouragement, though she could be strange

from time to time. When I was playing

Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew at

Exeter on one occasion, I got a message to

come to the telephone to speak to my

mother while the production was going on.

My grandmother was ill at the time and I

assumed it was about her, so I said, ‘Is Nana

all right?’ There was a pause from my

mother. ‘I mean, I’m worried about her.’

Another pause, then my mother said,

‘When you take your lovely feathered hat off,

will you straighten your hair? You’re looking

bald.’

Mum always came to my dressing room

after seeing one of my performances, and

always worried about me, and that went on

even after I was married to Sheila. I knew in

my heart that I would not even have got my

first job as an actor without her, let alone

Poirot. The two of them made such a

difference to me that I honestly do not think

I could have survived in the profession

without them.

My mother was so devoted to my career

that she came to see every play that I

performed on the stage. In fact, there was

one

occasion,

when

I

was

playing

Bolingbroke

in Richard II for the Royal

Shakespeare Company in Stratford, when

they even held up the rise of the curtain for

her, so that she could get to her seat before

we started the performance. That was how

much she meant to me, and to my

colleagues. She was so proud of everything I

had done. My one consolation after her

death was that at least she had seen my

career blossom.

The moment my mother’s funeral was over, I

flew to Morocco to film the first of the eight

films in the latest, fifth, Poirot series.

I cannot say that I was exactly ready to

start filming. In fact, I found it very difficult

indeed to climb back into my padding and

my false moustaches as the little Belgian. My

mother’s death was in my mind at every

moment, and I struggled to forget her as I

put on the spats and picked up Poirot’s

silver-topped cane again. Looking back, I do

not think that I was ever quite myself

throughout this series, because of the long

shadow cast by her death. But I did

everything in my power to honour her

memory and remain as professional as she

had always wanted me to be.

My mother’s death may have been the

subconscious reason behind the fact that I

collapsed during the filming of the first story

in the new series, The Adventure of the

Egyptian Tomb. It had never happened

before. I was sitting in an open-topped car in

the burning sun, without an umbrella to

protect me, as we filmed a series of takes of

Poirot arriving at a local police station. It

was very hot, and getting hotter – and my

padding was not helping.

To this day, I am not exactly sure what

happened. All I know is that the car pulled

up outside the police station on one of the

takes, I went to climb out, and everything

went black. I do not remember anything else

at all until I woke up indoors, lying flat on

my back, and found myself being given

oxygen through a mask by the unit’s nurse.

Apparently, I had fallen down in a dead faint.

The only thing I remember clearly as I

came round was the sight of one of the

production team looking at his watch,

worrying that we still had a lot to shoot that

day and could not afford to waste any time.

Such is an actor’s destiny.

The story was clearly inspired by the

discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun

by the English Egyptologist Howard Carter in

1922. News of the find first appeared only a

year or so before Dame Agatha’s own story

appeared in the Daily Sketch. It was later to

be

included

in

the

collection Poirot

Investigates, published in 1924. There could

be no doubt about her inspiration. All the

ingredients of King Tut’s curse are there –

right down to the discovery of a lost Egyptian

tomb and the ancient curse that is destined

to fall on anyone who dares open it.

Dame Agatha’s version tells of a series of

deaths following the discovery and opening

of the tomb of King Men-her-Ra by British

archaeologist Sir John Willard – who dies of

what appears to be a heart attack at the

very moment the tomb is opened. His widow

is convinced that there has been foul play

and consults Poirot, who finds himself,

before long, on his way to the Valley of the

Kings in Egypt – although, in our case,

Morocco was standing in for the original.

Poirot appears to take the legend of the

curse seriously, even saying to Hastings and

Miss Lemon at one point, ‘I also believe in

the force of superstition – it is a power that

is very great indeed.’ He is, of course, talking

about the power of the idea of superstition,

rather than the curse itself, for Poirot always

relies on logic.

Fortunately, the next story in the series

was to be filmed in England, so I had a

chance to recover in a rather more

temperate climate. Dame Agatha wrote The

Underdog in 1928, but it was not published

in England until 1960, when it appeared as

one of the stories in The Adventure of the

Christmas Pudding. Our new version was

written by a newcomer to the series, Bill

Craig, who set it around a golf match, but,

more significantly, it begins with Miss Lemon

attempting to hypnotise Poirot using her

new-found skill as a hypnotherapist. The

therapy does not work with the little man,

although it does play its part in the story.

The only thing I did not care for about the

plot was the notion that Poirot might like to

play golf. I simply did not agree. I can

remember saying to the production team,

‘Poirot does not play golf. He simply would

not.’ To my mind, he would always be

perfectly happy to watch Hastings play – and

indeed he takes some delight in the fact that

his friend scores a hole in one, to the

amazement of everyone, at the end of the

story – but my Poirot would always prefer to

watch.

The Underdog was one of Dame Agatha’s

slighter stories, but the next in the series,

The Yellow Iris was one of her strongest. It

had first appeared in the Strand Magazine in

1937 and was later published in a collection

called The Regatta Mystery in 1939. But the

screenwriter, Anthony Horowitz, expanded

the story considerably, giving it a flashback

sequence in Buenos Aires and adding the

idea that this was a crime that Poirot had

once failed to solve. Directed by Peter

Barber-Fleming, it focuses on a restaurant

called Le Jardin des Cygnes in Argentina and

the intervention of a corrupt Argentinean

general to prevent Poirot solving a murder

there. Still smarting at the failure, Poirot

seizes the chance two years later to reclaim

his reputation when a new restaurant opens