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 perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am "Hercule Poirot"." The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved. "What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?" Poirot is less active during the cases that take place at the end of his career. Beginning with "Three Act Tragedy" (1934), Christie had perfected during the inter-war years a subgenre of Poirot novel in which the detective himself spent much of the first third of the novel on the periphery of events. In novels such as "Taken at the Flood", "After the Funeral", and "Hickory Dickory Dock", he is even