Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?

“Only in England is the coffee so atrocious. On the Continent they understand how important it is for the digestion that it should be properly made.”

 The Big Four, Hercule Poirot on English coffee

Before I retired from teaching middle school English, every year I taught And Then There Were None to 7th grade and Murder on the Orient Express to 8th grade. Aside from being compelling murder mysteries that usually hooked even the most reluctant readers, there were many themes that could be explored using two of Agatha Christie’s most popular novels in my classes, such as social class, role of women, right from wrong, man vs. man, greed, social etiquette, and more.

And Then There Were None was a stand-alone novel, with no reoccurring character like Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. But, Poirot is at the top of his game in Murder on the Orient Express.

Poirot is featured in 33 of Christie’s novels, and he also solves crimes in more than 50 of her short stories. And, while food is not central to most of Christie’s stories, Poirot had very specific feelings about the foods he loved and those he simply would not tolerate.

Hercule Poirot was a retired Belgian police officer who settled in England during WWI. He became a renown detective, solving impossible crimes, such as locked-door mysteries. While he never got used to what the British call “coffee,” he did enjoy all of the accoutrements of the British afternoon tea, except for the tea, that is. If good coffee (and by that he meant coffee from his native Belgium or at least France) wasn’t available, then he would have a cup of hot chocolate, thick and bittersweet.

For breakfast, Poirot was very particular. He preferred two soft-boiled eggs, BUT the eggs must be identical in size and shape. The internet tells me that each chicken lays a specific size and shape egg and they are all the same, which means Poirot’s two eggs must come from the very same hen. If this is not possible, then he will have toast, a croissant, or some other assortment of breakfast pastries. I don’t eat eggs, but I can certainly get behind a continental breakfast every day for the rest of my life!

Many of the foods he favored for dinner were things that the British do very well, such as Dover sole, Sunday roast—be it chicken, beef, lamb, or pork—and of course, fresh vegetables prepared simply.

Poirot was brilliant, albeit pompous and annoying, and much like other fictional detectives that followed him, such as Monk, he could see the slightest thing that didn’t fit, the one thing that stood out, and much like Sherlock Holmes, who preceded Poirot by some thirty years, his “little grey cells” were always working much faster and much more clearly than any one else.

He has long been one of my favorite characters from a book, movie, or tv show. And, while many actors have portrayed Poirot on the big and small screen, there will only be one Poirot for me, and that is British actor David Suchet. To me, he embodies the true spirit of the character from Christie’s own pen, right down to his arrogant French accent.

One year at my school, while teaching one of Christie’s treasures, I dressed as Hercule Poirot for Halloween, but not just any Poirot, I dressed as David Suchet as Poirot. My daughter snapped a photo of me and matched it up with a photo of the one and only Poirot, David Suchet, in full costume. I think I earned dinner with him, don’t you think?