Hercule Poirot met his lifelong friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, and solved the first of his cases to be published, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles". It is clear that Hastings and Poirot are already friends when they meet in Chapter 2 of the novel, as Hastings tells Cynthia that he has not seen him for "some years". Particulars such as the date of 1916 for the case and that Hastings had met Poirot in Belgium, are given in "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case", Chapter 1. After that case, Poirot apparently came to the attention of the British secret service and undertook cases for the
Agatha Christie's Poirot of the final episode, only slightly short of the target he had set himself (in a 2007 interview) of completing the entire canon before his 65th birthday. The short stories and novellas "The Submarine Plans", "The Market Basing Mystery", "Christmas Adventure," "The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest," "The Second Gong," "The Incident of the Dog's Ball," and "Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly" were not filmed in their original short story format, as Agatha Christie later rewrote these stories as novellas or novels ("The Incredible Theft", "Murder in the Mews", "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", "The Mystery of the