Hercule Poirot of Police of Brussels, until "the Great War" (World War I) forced him to leave for England. (In "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" Poirot had retired at age 55 in 1905) I had called in at my friend Poirot's rooms to find him sadly overworked. So much had he become the rage that every rich woman who had mislaid a bracelet or lost a pet kitten rushed to secure the services of the great Hercule Poirot. During World War I, Poirot left Belgium for England as a refugee (although he returned a few times). On 16 July 1916 he again
Agatha Christie's Poirot that the story was first published in book format in "The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories" (published in the United States in 1939). Although the story is now associated with Parker Pyne, it was included in the 2008 omnibus volume "Hercule Poirot: the Complete Short Stories", which was the first public association of the story with Hercule Poirot since the original Strand Magazine publication of 1936. Aside from "Poirot and the Regatta Mystery", the one authentic Hercule Poirot story not included in any form, whole or partial, in the "Agatha Christie's Poirot" series is the 1930 play "Black Coffee". Although