Hercule Poirot sort of obsessive-compulsive" in Poirot. As mentioned in "Curtain" and "The Clocks", he is fond of classical music, particularly Mozart and Bach. In "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", Poirot operates as a fairly conventional, clue-based and logical detective; reflected in his vocabulary by two common phrases: his use of "the little grey cells" and "order and method". Hastings is irritated by the fact that Poirot sometimes conceals important details of his plans, as in "The Big Four". In this novel, Hastings is kept in the dark throughout the climax. This aspect of Poirot is less evident in the later novels,
Hercule Poirot of Roger Ackroyd". It has been said that the twelve cases related in "The Labours of Hercules" (1947) must refer to a different retirement, but the fact that Poirot specifically says that he intends to grow marrows indicates that these stories also take place before "Roger Ackroyd", and presumably Poirot closed his agency once he had completed them. There is specific mention in "The Capture of Cerberus" of the twenty-year gap between Poirot's previous meeting with Countess Rossakoff and this one. If the "Labours" precede the events in "Roger Ackroyd", then the Ackroyd case must have taken place around twenty