Hercule Poirot and Frank Howel Evans' Monsieur Poiret, a retired Belgian police officer living in London. A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In "An Autobiography", Christie states, "I was still writing in the Sherlock Holmes tradition – eccentric detective, stooge assistant, with a Lestrade-type Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Japp". For his part, Conan Doyle acknowledged basing his detective stories on the model of Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and his anonymous narrator, and basing his character Sherlock Holmes on Joseph Bell, who in his use of "ratiocination" prefigured Poirot's reliance on his
C. Auguste Dupin The two met by accident while both were searching for "the same rare and very remarkable volume" in an obscure library. This scene, the two characters searching for a hidden text, serves as a metaphor for detection. They promptly move to an old manor located in "Faubourg Saint-Germain". For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics. He bears the title "Chevalier", meaning that he is a knight in the Légion d'honneur. Dupin shares some features with the later gentleman detective, a character type that became common in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He is acquainted with police