Hard-Boiled Defective

I can’t believe it of him. Talk about feet of clay. The other day I picked up a curiosity. A Hercule Poirot mystery I had never previously encountered. The Labours of Hercules it was called. Strange, I said to myself. I thought I knew all of them, but that title is news to me. There had never been a film of it, with the immortal Peter Ustinov, nor a TV version with the actor whose performance seems to have surgically moulded him into Poirot - David Suchet - nor yet a radio adaptation with the excellent John Moffat. It was an old edition, circa 1970, although the fly-leaf recorded that it was first published in 1939. So, it had been in print thirty odd years but faded since. I wondered why. It was on a bric-a-brac stall in a small market town, far from London and very cheaply priced. I bought it and tucked in on the way home, but soon discovered why it is somewhat less famous than other classic Poirots.
“Oh, I know,” you’ll be thinking. “It’s going to be like with that other famous Belgian, Tin Tin. It’ll be Poirot in the Congo - right?” Actually, no. It is politically dated, but not in that way. If anything, this one is worse...
I was highly impressed with the problem story, at first. Hercule is called in by the ‘People’s Party’ to deal with exactly the circumstances that overtook Westminster this year. Soon to be accused of presiding over a massive plundering of public funds for their own enrichment, party grandees admit that all the allegations are true, but can the story be suppressed? It’s so prescient, it’s almost spooky. The story is even called ‘The Augean Stables’! A passage from seventy years ago that sounds like it has come straight out of today’s papers.
I am sure that many politicians besieged by the expenses scandal might have wished for some help from a legendary detective to rid them of their duck house and moat-cleaning shame. Weirdly, Agatha Christie had foreseen all, in 1939, and put her top man on the case. So what happened?
Ah, well, that is where the clay feet come in. Poirot does exactly as he is told. He sets about ruining the newspaper that is preparing to air the story by feeding them a fake ‘scoop’ that he himself has engineered. They seize the bait, print the posed ‘sex scandal’ photos he has given them, and in no time Poirot has them in court for libel, trotting out a host of actors he has primed to testify the version of events that suit his clients. Success! The newspaper is forced to close as the case goes against its owners. Now no-one will believe their real story! Hurrah for Poirot! Lashings of ginger beer all round!
I turned the page, waiting for the O Henry ending, the one where Poirot reveals a far worse scandal that he has uncovered, one which will send the whole rotten People’s Party to prison forever. It was not there. I was aghast. There was no trace of irony in the mystery. Hercule Poirot, the great detective, had lied, set a ‘honey-trap’ for investigative reporters, fabricated evidence, wasted police time, solicited others to perjure themselves, faked a scandal to ruin a campaigning newspaper... and done all this purely and simply to make it safe for politicians to steal as much money from the tax-payer as they could carry! This was the moral of the story: helping good chaps in government to plunder the public purse in secret is a jolly good thing, don’cha know!
Oh, Hercule, Hercule... how you sold yourself! No wonder Ustinov, Suchet and Moffat never enacted this one. Those journalists were just like your famous compatriot! It is as if you were helping crooks that Tin Tin was trying to expose! That’s how ghastly this is! Maybe your readers cheered your actions in 1939, but today, as events repeat themselves, your reputation would look about as good as Hazel Blear’s car does right now, and you wouldn’t be using your little gray cells... you’d be in one.