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
Hercule Poirot 1960, she felt that he was a "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep". Yet the public loved him and Christie refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked. Captain Arthur Hastings's first description of Poirot: Agatha Christie's initial description of Poirot in "The Murder on the Orient Express": In the later books, his limp is not mentioned, suggesting it may have been a temporary wartime injury. (In "", Poirot admits he was wounded when he first came to England.) Poirot has green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining "like a