There was a great outpouring of grief in Belgium this morning when it was announced that David Suchet, the actor who brought to life the fictional detective created by Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, would play the part no more due to complications arising from the Belgian sleuth's heart condition.
Suchet had been filming the final scenes of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, and had admitted his guilt in a murder shortly before his own death, as well as being addicted to amyl nitrite.
Suchet had acted quickly to snuff out his victim shortly before his own death in the show so that he could avoid succumbing to the arrogance of the murderer, concerned that he may come to view himself as entitled to kill those he deemed necessary to eliminate.
The "murderer" he was hunting had never expressly killed anyone, but subtly and psychologically, he had manipulated others to kill for him, manipulating the moments where others desire to commit murder so that they carry out the crime when they might otherwise dismiss their thoughts as nothing more than the heat of the moment. Poirot thus was forced to kill the man himself, as otherwise he would have continued his actions and never been officially convicted as he did not legally do anything wrong. It is revealed at the end of Curtain that he fakes his need for a wheelchair so as to fool people into believing that he is suffering from arthritis, to give the impression that he is more infirm than he is. His last recorded words are "Cher ami!", spoken to Hastings as the Captain left his room. Poirot was buried at Styles, and his funeral was arranged by his best friends and Hastings' daughter, Judith. Hastings reasoned, "Here was the spot where he had lived when he first came to this country. He was to lie here at the last." (Wikipedia)
David Suchet's brother, Jon, is a TV presenter and newscaster.
He later appeared as right as rain in a subsequent show named Being Poirot, giving rise to the suggestion that he may not, after all, be dead.
In the show, gullible Belgians, including the Lord Mayor of Brussels, smiled politely, and gave the impression that they admired Suchet for portraying Poirot as an intelligent fellow Belgian who made them proud to be Belgian themselves, instead of hating their existences in the cold, rainy, miserable lowland domain famous only for rich chocolates and its miserableness.
Hercule Poirot RIP.
